The Untold Truth Of The White Lotus' Walton Goggins

It's fair to say that the career of Walton Goggins has exploded in recent years. First coming to fame as conflicted corrupt cop Shane Vendrell on police drama "The Shield," he went on to define himself as a top-tier actor via a series of wildly diverse roles. A short list of these includes Kentucky crime boss Boyd Crowder in "Justified," a widowed father in sitcom "The Unicorn," sleazy televangelist Baby Billy Freeman in "The Righteous Gemstones," Sheriff Chris Mannix in the "The Hateful Eight" (directed by the often-controversial Quentin Tarantino), and a mutant bounty hunter known as the Ghoul in post-apocalyptic series "Fallout."

More recently, Goggins has been garnering some of the best reviews of his life for his portrayal of mysterious Rick Hatchett in the third season of HBO's "The White Lotus," following on the heels of "White Lotus'" critically-acclaimed second season and its stellar cast. "I think he's a person who's been running from his past for a really long time," Goggins told The Hollywood Reporter of his character. "He's angry, bitter, and disappointed at the life that he has been dealt ... He comes to the White Lotus looking for, not answers, but closure."

Having appeared in dozens of films and TV series over the past two-plus decades, he's been in the public eye for some time — but how much do fans really know about this talented star? To find out, keep on reading to discover the untold truth of Walton Goggins.

Born and raised in the South, Walton Goggins was still in his teens when he headed to Hollywood — with just $300 to his name – to launch a career as an actor. He logged his first major screen role in the 1990 TV movie, "Murder in Mississippi." Over the course of the next decade, he continued to land small parts in film and television — but acting certainly wasn't paying his rent. In order to make ends meet, he hatched a plan. "I said, 'Well, f*** this. I know valet parking. I did that during college and I made a s***load of money doing it," Goggins told Vanity Fair.

Demonstrating the "audacity" that would later come to characterize his career, he put on a suit and pitched himself to some of the city's top restaurants, attempting to land a contract to run the valet parking at those restaurants. He did, and for several years, that business thrived as he enlisted other aspiring young actors to park cars for as many as nine restaurants. "The goal was to have our freedom," he explained. "I was in [acting] class when I wasn't working, and we all covered each other's shifts."

That wasn't the only job he held while auditioning for what he hoped would someday be a breakthrough role that would allow him to support himself as a full-time actor. "I sold cowboy boots. I became a personal trainer," he told Business Insider. "But along with all of that I was very fortunate to start working as an actor straight away."

While there have been many successful celebrity brands, Walton Goggins is among the numerous celebrities with a side gig in the booze business. In late 2016, he and partner Matthew Alper launched their own Los Angeles-based distillery, Mulholland Distilling, producing whiskey, vodka, and gin.

For Goggins, a proud cocktail aficionado, producing liquor seemed like a natural fit. "I absolutely love it," he told Loam Baby. "For me, drinking has always been associated with conversation, with literature and art. And so it wasn't a spirit that inspired me, it was a lifestyle of people I saw in photographs who ended a day with a celebratory drink about what they had accomplished, or what they had experienced during their travels on any specific day."

According to Goggins, the business philosophy propelling Mulholland Distilling is both deceptively simple, yet challenging to achieve: producing quality, complex spirits at a reasonable price point. "It's sophistication that is affordable," Goggins said of the distillery's products. "I've never been a guy inside the velvet rope. Ever ... I'm still waiting to get an invitation behind the velvet rope. We just live our lives and be as honest and as forthright as possible."

The success that Walton Goggins achieved after his breakout role in "The Shield" has afforded him the ability to see the world. Traveling to far-flung locales he'd dreamed of visiting since he was a kid, Goggins developed a habit during his journeys: collecting sand and seashells from whatever country he finds himself in as mementos of those trips. "These are just places that I've been, represented in sand and seashells," he explained in a video interview for GQ. "I'll get, like, a little vessel in whatever country it is, I'll just find a little place and then I'll put, you know, some dirt or rocks, or something from the experience in it."

To elaborate, he held up a small jar containing red sand from Namibia, and another containing sand from the Sahara. For Goggins, these small cups filled with sand take him back to that place and the time when he visited there. The Sahara sand, he noted, came from a trip when he was 30 years old. "So it was like 22 years ago," he reflected.

He also displayed sand from a Mozambique beach and "mermaid dollars," small shells he came across on a beach near Cape Town in South Africa. "So these things are essential only to the extent that they are representative of great experiences in my life," he added.

Walton Goggins' revelation that he collected sand and shells from exotic places he'd visited was part of a GQ video in which he revealed his 10 essentials. Among the other nine items he considered essential included a white Stetson that had been given to him by actor pal Sam Rockwell, a lighter ("I happen to live in a house that has seven fireplaces," he explained), and an orange Sharpie highlighter, which he uses to highlight scripts. "I travel with, like, 20 of these things," he said.

Another thing he considered essential was the fan app for his phone — an app in which an imaginary fan spins and creates a whirring white noise. "I use this fan app every day of my life," Goggins proclaimed. "I'm a big napper. I nap every day, even when I'm working, for the half-hour that we have off I go straight in, I put on headphones, and I listen to this app," he added.

As he explained, when he was a kid, he'd often fall asleep with the sound of a fan in the background. Discovering the app was a natural progression. "And it lulls me to sleep every day," Goggins said. "So essential."

When the COVID-19 pandemic shut down the entire world in 2020, Walton Goggins was among the numerous Hollywood actors to suddenly find himself unable to ply his trade. With film and television production shutting down, he decided to see the unanticipated time off as an opportunity. He purchased a 22-foot Mercedes Sprinter van, in which he, his wife (director Nadia Conners), and their son, Augustus, hit the road on a cross-country journey throughout America. They decided to nickname their vehicle Vacilando, a moniker borrowed from John Steinbeck's novel, "Travels With Charley." In that book, the word (which isn't actually a word) is said to refer to someone who "is going somewhere but doesn't greatly care whether or not he gets there, although he has direction."

That description appealed to Goggins, characterizing a road trip in which the journey was prioritized over getting to the destination. It also represented how much he has traveled throughout the country because of his vocation. "I'm going to say I've worked in 30 [states], conservatively — but let's call it 36 out of 50," he told GQ.

While Goggins spent years in Los Angeles building his career, he and his family eventually relocated to a farm in the state of New York. Instead of being stuck in traffic on an LA freeway, Goggins instead reveled in spending his free time riding horses with his family.

During his first years in Hollywood during the early 1990s, Walton Goggins landed some small roles, but certainly wasn't setting the world on fire. He was thrilled when he was cast in his first feature film role, in 1992's "Mr. Saturday Night," starring and directed by Billy Crystal, an actor who we haven't heard much from lately. However, Goggins was disheartened when he discovered his scene had been left out of the finished film. It wasn't until the movie came out on video, which featured deleted scenes, that he was finally able to watch his film debut. "I'll never forget when I rented it from Blockbuster and I saw it for the first time, I started crying," he told Vanity Fair.

His next big-screen role came a couple of years later in "The Next Karate Kid." While appearing on the "WTF with Marc Maron," Goggins revealed that his auditioning had gone well enough that the film's director, Christopher Cain, was torn between him and another actor. "I was called back four times," he recalled, revealing that the other actor ultimately got the part.

After some brooding over watching what should have been his big break sift through his fingers, Goggins decided to take a big swing. "I knew they liked me," Goggins told Maron, explaining that he called up Cain and asked if he could audition for the bad guy's friend, Charlie. "He said 'You would do that?' And I said, 'Are you kidding me? Yes, please!'" According to Goggins, Cain hired him on the spot, propelling his career to its next level.

Playing dirty LAPD cop Shane Vendrell on critically acclaimed drama "The Shield" proved to be the breakthrough role that Walton Goggins had been pursuing for a decade. During the show's critically acclaimed seven-season run, Goggins proved to be a standout, demonstrating far more nuance as an actor than most would expect from a TV cop show.

It's a testament to Goggins' skills that Shane even made it into the series — considering that his character wasn't supposed to be part of "The Shield" beyond the first episode. "You know, I was supposed to be fired after the pilot of 'The Shield,'" Goggins revealed in an interview with Nashville Scene. It was the series' creator, Shawn Ryan, who fought with network executives to insist that Goggins remain on the show. "And he knew — and this is something I didn't know — that episode two of 'The Shield' had to be about Shane Vendrell, and he wrote it as such. And it was after FX saw that that they began to understand what Shawn saw from the very beginning," Goggins explained.

As Goggins told Nashville Scene, he didn't find out he'd nearly been fired until much later, long after the first season's episodes had been shot. "And Shawn didn't tell me this until we were doing the DVD commentary for season one of 'The Shield' — thank God he didn't tell me," he said.

While Charlie Hunnam may have a definite opinion about reprising his role in "Sons of Anarchy," it's likely that Walton Goggins may feel differently. Starting in 2012, Goggins made his debut in "Sons of Anarchy" as Venus Van Dam, a transgender woman who forms a relationship with biker Tig (played by Kim Coates). Goggins ultimately reprised the character in five more episodes of the series, created by former "Shield" writer Kurt Sutter. Venus became a fan favorite, something that Goggins admitted took him by surprise. "It's a huge show and I was really worried about the reaction from the audience," he told the Sydney Morning Herald. "And I think one of the most gratifying things of my entire career, all the directors, actors, people I have worked it, almost pales in comparison to the love and acceptance that this audience has had for this character."

Besides the acclaim from fans, Goggins revealed that stepping into Venus' high heels was a transformative experience for him. "She's touched a different, a real place in me that I just didn't know existed," he added. "She's allowed me to see the world through her point of view. It's forever changed me; I get emotional thinking about it. She is here and present and I think the fact that she's transgender is just awesome."

That said, he was not enamored with the process he had to undertake each time he returned to the show. That, he explained, included a facial, waxing, a mani-pedi, and repeatedly shaving his entire body. "It's a process," he said. "I spent more money to look this way than my wife does."

Mention the fact that Walton Goggins accepted an Academy Award and expect to be met with blank stares and scratching of heads as people rack their brains trying to remember which film role won him an Oscar. That's understandable, because he won his little gold man way back in 2002, for a short film titled "The Accountant". Written and directed by "Sons of Anarchy" actor Ray McKinnon (who also starred in it), the short follows the story of a family farm on the verge of bankruptcy until an unconventional accountant offers some outside-of-the-box ideas to turn things around.

When the film won the Oscar for best live action short film, McKinnon and executive producer Lisa Blount were joined onstage by Goggins. While McKinnon and Blount were announced as winners (no mention of Goggins was made in the nomination), he proudly held the Oscar, and even issued a few brief words of thanks before his exit. As Goggins subsequently explained in an interview with Business Insider, the only reason he wasn't an official Oscar winner was a prohibitive Academy regulation. "In the short film category you can only put two names down for the award, so it was Ray and Lisa, but we all did it together so we all decided we'd walk up on stage," he said. "And we timed our speech so we all could talk in 30 seconds and not piss anyone off. It came from the heart and it brought the house down."

Blount, who was married to McKinnon, died in 2010. Goggins confirmed that he was in possession of the Oscar that — technically, at least — she had won. "I have one and Ray has the other and we have Lisa in our hearts," he said.

One of Walton Goggins' most distinctive physical characteristics is his toothy smile. Interestingly, his prominent two front teeth were nearly lost years ago. He explained how that came to be while appearing in a 2016 episode of "Conan." According to the actor, he owed the loss of his two front teeth to childhood sports.

"I showed up late to baseball practice in the fifth grade, and I had to take a lap and I was running to centerfield and all I heard was 'Walton,'" he told comedy writer-turned talk show host Conan O'Brien. "And I turned around and I caught a baseball right in my mouth, and literally my two front teeth were on the ground next to me." Luckily, his doctor was able to insert the teeth back into the gums. "They jammed them back in," Goggins recalled, admitting it was "the most excruciating pain" he'd ever experienced. However, it actually worked. "They healed and the roots connected," he recalled.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the only mishap he experienced with those same two teeth. "And everything was fine until a year-and-a-half later, I dove off into the shallow end of a pool and hit the bottom and knocked them out again," he added. This time, the teeth were not able to be saved. As Goggins confirmed, the pearly whites that gleam whenever he breaks into his signature smile are the product of modern dentistry, not nature.

In 2019, Walton Goggins shifted gears by starring in his first-ever network television sitcom, CBS comedy "The Unicorn." Goggins played Wade Felton, a widower who's still getting over the death of his wife while raising their two daughters solo. When his friends tell him that enough time has passed, he tentatively dips his toe back into the dating pool — only to discover he's the titular unicorn: a nice, single guy who's a good father with a good job, the ultimate catch for single women in his demographic.

For Goggins — who lost his first wife to suicide in 2004 — the experience of moving on after the death of a spouse wasn't something he had to dig too deep on to portray on screen. In fact, as he told the Daily Beast, his role in "The Unicorn" was the nearest thing to playing himself that he's experienced as an actor. "The thing that scared me the most, to be quite honest with you, is that this is closer to who I am than anything I've ever played," he said. "Really, it kind of is me. I don't have anything to hide behind."