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With Hollywood and the music industry being such a tough nut to crack, it isn’t surprising that many actors and musicians had to find their start doing some pretty crazy and embarrassing things. Aliens and Big Love actor Bill Paxton spent his early days enjoying a new wave music career. As Dangerous Minds points out, this only confirms that “Bill Paxton is a goddamn charming weirdo.” After the break, we feature his surreal music project, as well as plenty of other pop culture stars with cringeworthy past lives. See who got perved on as a party clown, who dabbled in porn, and what woman had to dress up as a roller-skating sperm, below.

Bill Paxton

Titanic filmmaker James Cameron directed Bill Paxton’s new wave band, Martini Ranch, in the video for “Reach,” but the visuals could easily be right out of Cameron’s ex-wife’s movie — Kathryn Bigelow’s Near Dark. In that film, Paxton played an unhinged vampire who travels with a blood-sucking clan (Lance Henriksen and Jenette Goldstein amongst them). They all appear in the 1988 music video that features cowgirls, a woman ripped from the Conan film series, a Mad Max-style apocalyptic desert, and other weirdsies.