They were two Hollywood up-and-comers, Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen, each carving out a peculiar niche in some of cinema’s wildest universes. One might notice their names popping up in the credits of every monstrous blockbuster from Aliens to The Terminator—where each of them, invariably, wound up on the losing side of a lethal predator’s rampage. Oh, they didn’t just stumble into roles destined to be devoured by extra-terrestrials or demolished by cyborgs; they wanted it that way. Why, they practically competed over who could snag the most spectacular cinematic demise—alien or android, which elaborate end could top the last?
But that was only the beginning, because Bill Paxton concocted a mischievous notion to one-up it all. His playground? James Cameron’s colossal hit, Titanic. In a particularly sly mood, Bill crafted a secret rewrite of that film’s script—this time, leaving no iceberg for him to heroically succumb to. Instead, a grinning little old lady, fed up with all the dramatics over her “Heart of the Ocean,” would off poor Bill’s character right then and there, tipping him into the icy depths like an unwanted stowaway. It was so outrageously off the rails that the footage was locked away, never intended to see the light of day. But hidden alongside certain VHS editions was a third tape—given only to a handful of fans—that contained this alternate ending. Only the lucky few who wrote in got to witness Paxton’s final fling into the sea, courtesy of an unexpected leading lady.
For years, that mysterious third tape remained just that: a legend. A coda to the unspoken rivalry between two actors who thrived on dying in dramatic fashion. No xenomorph, no futuristic robot, no dreadlocked alien hunter could match the real final boss of Bill Paxton’s on-screen fate: the elderly Rose Dawson, who unceremoniously sent him plunging to his watery doom—just to outdo her cinematic rivals in the process.
Two men, each scoring points by how fantastically they perished on film—only to discover that their greatest foe was not from outer space or the future, but from a sentimental tearjerker. And that is precisely why, after all these years, the ultimate monster in Bill Paxton and Lance Henriksen’s fabled competition turned out to be… an old lady in Titanic.
