Billy Zane

Dead Calm (1989) got him noticed as a cold-eyed psychopath terrorizing a couple on their yacht, and Hollywood immediately tried to make him a superhero. He spent over a year and a half prepping the physique and body language for The Phantom (1996). It cost $45 million and made $17 million at the box office. James Cameron cast him as Cal Hockley in Titanic the following year. The superhero liability became the villain audiences rooted against in a $2 billion film.

Post-Titanic, the franchise-sized roles didn't come. He's spent the years since doing B-movie work, Lifetime films, and the occasional character turn, including playing Marlon Brando in Waltzing with Brando (2024). He co-wrote and directed INT.HALLWAY/NIGHT, an existentialist dark comedy acquired by Buffalo 8 at Cannes. Meanwhile his visual art practice has grown into something serious: shows at Art Basel Miami, galleries in London, Budapest, and Milan. Whether the acting or the painting matters more to him is not ambiguous.

His family name was Zanetakos. His Greek-born parents (his father from the Mani peninsula, his mother from Chios) shortened it to Zane, which tracks for someone who spent his career playing men with old-money smoothness. The painting started on the Titanic set. Seven months filming in Baja California, a garage, and Julian Schnabel's Basquiat, and he came back to L.A. with an abstract expressionism practice he hasn't put down since. He works outdoors now, in remote locations, with found and recycled materials, which is either a sincere artistic philosophy or the most stylish way to avoid reading scripts.