Paul Winfield is Lt. Traxler

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Paul Winfield, born the 22nd of May 1941 in Los Angeles, California, USA... was an imposing black actor, who first came to the attention of TV audiences opposite Diahann Carroll on the sitcom 'Julia' from 1968 to 1971, and he's done some of his best work on the small screen, especially as civil-rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 'King', a 1978 miniseries.

Winfield's feature-film success had been limited to a few choice roles, notably the dignified sharecropper in Sounder (1972, for which he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination), but he has had plenty of movie work over the last two decades without falling into the blaxploitation quagmire.

He debuted in The Lost Man (1969), and was visible in R.P.M, Conrack, Huckleberry Finn, The Greatest, Carbon Copy, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Blue City, The Serpent and the Rainbow ...but his best parts in the past 15 years have mainly been on stage or in TV dramas.

We all know him as the sarcastic, but likeable, Lt. Traxler ...supposedly having a particularly thankless time going up against murderous cyborg Arnold Schwarzenegger in The Terminator (1984).

His appearance and the development of his character is much more interesting when you check the deleted scenes on the Special Edition DVD. Some plotdevelopments that would have been cool for the entire movie.

Paul Winfield has been battling diabetes for the last couple of years prior to his death, Sunday the 7th of March 2004. He will be missed.

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