What Happened To The Cast Of Twister?

Like the 1970s, the ’90s were a great decade for disaster films. In addition to films like “Deep Impact,” “Armageddon,” “Independence Day,” “Dante’s Peak,” and “Volcano,” there was, of course, “Twister.” The Jan de Bont film followed a storm-chasing couple on the verge of divorce, chasing one of the worst outbreaks of tornados in the history of Oklahoma. Though the film is now almost three decades old, it holds up!

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There are lots of reasons why the movie works so well. One major factor was de Bont’s insistence on practical effects. “We dropped those combines hanging from helicopters onto the road as the car was driving, which, of course, makes for the best reaction you can get from the actors, because it’s goddamned real,” he told Vulture. “They really fall from the sky, and it is not like a little fall.”

Another major aspect of the film’s success was its cast. The big ensemble is full of colorful characters performed by some seriously talented thespians, chewing into dialogue that was inspired by the screwball pitter-patter of “His Girl Friday.” de Bont explained, “A couple tries to get back together, and they like to argue a lot, and there’s some humor in it — the structure is very similar.” That couple was played by Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt, and among others, they were joined on their adventure by a future Oscar winner, someone who would become the oldest Tony winner ever, and someone who’d become the richest actor in the world.

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“Twister” is about tornadoes, yes, but it’s also about the relationship between Dr. Jo Harding and her husband Bill. Helen Hunt played the former, winning fans through the character’s characteristically dry wit and especially her hyper-competence. Jo has developed “Dorothy,” a new meteorological implement made up of thousands of sensor balls. Hunt told Vulture that the “Twister” shoot was long and arduous, recalling that they spent many days on end being hit with everything from hail to fake glass. “I don’t remember the easy part of the shoot,” she said. “It was rigorous. And Jan de Bont — there’s a reason his movies look so cool. Which is what you want in a filmmaker.”

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Hunt wasn’t really a movie star before “Twister,” but she became one after. She’d go on to lead films like “What Women Want,” “As Good As It Gets,” “Pay It Forward,” and “Cast Away.” Before “Twister,” she was known primarily for her work on “Mad About You,” a sitcom that initially ran until 1999. They brought it back a decade later as a limited series that aired as a Spectrum Original in 2019, reuniting Hunt with her co-star Paul Reiser. Though they were hesitant about revisiting the show, Reiser and Hunt eventually agreed that it was worthwhile. “It was as if no time had passed,” Hunt told Parade.

You may think Helen Hunt disappeared from Hollywood, but the “Soul Surfer” star can be seen on “Hacks,” where she plays terrifying television executive Winnie Lindell. 

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Whereas Jo Harding is a meteorologist, her husband Bill is a weatherman. Bill Paxton played his namesake as a charismatic, if occasionally infuriating, thrillseeker, an impulsive person who irks but ultimately supports his wife. After “Twister,” Paxton would go on to star in films like “Titanic,” “Mighty Joe Young,” “U-571,” and “Vertical Limit.” He’d also make the jump to television in the 2000s, playing a polygamist on HBO’s “Big Love.”

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Paxton loved “Twister,” and for years after starring in the film, he tried to get a sequel off the ground. He took a long trip to the South with “Twister” co-star Scott Thomson, tracking some of the most dangerous tornadoes in history. “We just did that to kind of get some ideas, and from that I kind of extrapolated an idea for a sequel,” he told Premium Hollywood in 2010. “And I kind of put that together into a format, and now we’re kind of waiting to see if that’s going to move forward.”

Unfortunately, the “Twister” sequel didn’t materialize until 2024. Paxton died in 2017, leaving behind a legacy that included movies like “Aliens” and “Tombstone.” His “Twister” co-stars were devastated by his death, with many memorializing him on social media. Sharing a rain-soaked snapshot of the two clutching one another in “Twister,” Helen Hunt wrote on Facebook, “‪He made this movie great — he acted his heart out. What a talented man. My thoughts are with his family.”

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As “Twister” begins, the Hardings are headed for divorce. Bill has already moved on with Dr. Melissa Reeves (Jami Gertz), another meteorologist. While Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt were the marquee names on the movie poster, Gertz, too, has a pivotal role in the film. After all, she’s the one who delivers the movie’s most iconic line: “We got cows!” Hunt agrees. “I think the secret weapon in that duo is that it was a triangle. Jami Gertz doesn’t get all the glory like Bill and I did,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “She had the less flashy part, but I think she was part of the secret sauce that made it fun to watch.”

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The year after “Twister,” Gertz played Dr. Nina Pomerantz on six episodes of “E.R.” Shortly after that, she led the cast of “Still Standing,” a sitcom that would run for 88 episodes. “Still Standing” was a family show, and Gertz told “The Early Show” (via CBS News) that she was still trying to balance being a working mom herself. “I love reading about the actresses that say you can have it all. I’m like, you can have it all and screw it all up!”

These days, Gertz truly does have it all — or at least, more than any other actor in the business. In 2025, various outlets reported that thanks to her husband, Tony Ressler, who’s in private equity, Gertz’s net worth stands at a staggering $8 billion. 

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The Hardings aren’t the only stormchasers in “Twister” who are out on the open road. There’s another crew headed by Dr. Jonas Miller (Cary Elwes), a foolhardy chaser willing to risk the safety of his crew far more than the Hardings. The actor also had some safety-related concerns of his own, according to an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. After all, he noted that production began in Oklahoma right after the Oklahoma City bombing devastated the state, and he said they even crossed paths with a motorcade carrying Timothy McVeigh on the highway. “We arrived during a very difficult time for Oklahoma, but they couldn’t have been more friendly to us,” Elwes said. “We made it a point to pay our respects to all the victims of that terrible tragedy.”

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Thanks to roles like “The Princess Bride” and “Robin Hood: Men In Tights,” Elwes was already a star before “Twister.” He would go on to appear in films like “Liar, Liar,” “The Informant,” “Kiss The Girls,” and “Shadow of the Vampire.” In 2004, Elwes played a man stuck in a terrible situation in a terrible bathroom, lending the small cast of “Saw” some serious cred. It’s a franchise he would later return to, telling NME, “I had to watch the other films in order to prepare for that, and I couldn’t do it in one sitting. I had to pace myself with them.” Elwes also lent his talents to another major franchise, starring in “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One.”

“Jan de Bont wanted actors,” Helen Hunt told Vulture about the cast of “Twister.” “He wanted theater actors, and not movie stars, which I’m sure was not easy for him to convince people.” One such actor was the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman. He played a storm-chaser named Dusty, an excitable guy who’s looking forward to facing down a hypothetical twister he calls “the extreme.”

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In addition to parts in popular films like “Mission: Impossible III,” “Along Came Polly,” several “Hunger Games” movies, and “The Big Lebowski,” Hoffman would appear in a number of mostly acclaimed films as one of the most respected actors of his generation. His filmography also includes movies like “Magnolia,” “Charlie Wilson’s War,” “The Talented Mr. Ripley,” “Synecdoche, New York,” “Doubt,” and “The Master.” Hoffman took home the Oscar for Best Actor in 2006, which he won for playing Truman Capote in “Capote.” During his acceptance speech, he thanked his mother for taking him to his first play. “Be proud, mom, because I’m proud of you and we’re here tonight and it’s so good,” he said.

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Sadly, Hoffman died in 2014. Reflecting on the losses of Hoffman and Bill Paxton, de Bont told The Hollywood Reporter, “Those two were basically the shapeshifters of that group, and they helped make a group of really amazing people feel as if they had worked together for a really long time.”

Like any good action movie, “Twister” also has moments of rest. As the gang chases a storm across Oklahoma, they stop for a while at the house of Jo’s Aunt Meg (Lois Smith). Unfortunately, said house isn’t long for this world, and soon Aunt Meg herself must flee the terrible tornado bearing down on her home. Smith has been in the business a long time; you can even spot her acting alongside James Dean in “East of Eden.” She remained young-looking for a long time, telling Deadline that she used to tell casting directors, “Why don’t we say I’m between 15 and 100?”

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Smith is still quite prolific. After “Twister,” she went on to star in movies like “Minority Report,” “Hollywoodland,” “Marjorie Prime,” and “Lady Bird.” She had a recurring role as Sookie Stackhouse’s Gran on “True Blood,” and she’s popped in on everything from “E.R.” and “The Americans” to “Ray Donovan” and “Gossip Girl.”

She’s also a celebrated stage actor. In 2021, at age 90, she became the oldest-ever Tony-winning performer thanks to her role in “The Inheritance.” Smith told Variety that she was glad the long play only needed her three times a week, performed as it was in two halves. “I think to myself, ‘Now what’s going to happen to me?'” she joked. “This may be the end of me. Suppose somebody asks me to do eight shows a week, what am I going to say?”

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In the ’90s, Todd Field was primarily an actor. He starred in “Twister” as Tim “Beltzer” Lewis, one of the van-driving storm chasers along for the movie’s wild ride. Field later told The Los Angeles Times that he was considered for the role of Dusty, which ultimately went to Philip Seymour Hoffman; instead, he was given the part of Beltzer, and Field looked forward to a short scene where he’d get to sing “Oklahoma!” The part was almost cut. “I got very upset, let’s put it that way, and we ended up shooting it,” he recalled. “So I feel completely satisfied. I had my ‘Twister’ moment, and it was a wonderful cast. I have very, very happy memories of that shoot.”

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These days, Field is best known as a director. In 2001, he helmed “In The Bedroom,” which was followed in 2006 by “Little Children.” Field took a significant break, returning in 2023 with “Tár,” starring Cate Blanchett as a conductor who falls from grace. He wrote the script in three months, diving in when COVID-19 hit, although he’d conceptualized Lydia Tár years earlier. “There was sort of a vague idea to write something about classical music that involved a conductor,” he recalled. “That was sort of it. Other than that, the studio really had no idea, nor did they tell me what they wanted. So it was a perfect opportunity to take this character and just say, ‘All right, here we go. It’s time.'”

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“Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” star Alan Ruck appeared in “Twister” as Robert “Rabbit” Nurick, one of the group’s storm chasers who works as a navigator. Ruck told Pop Culture Planet that filming was tough, given that they were acting against nice weather most of the time, with heavy winds faked by jet engines. “We were staring at clear blue skies, not a cloud in the sky,” he recalled. “Our director would say, ‘You guys are not scared enough! This is the biggest storm, you’re going to die!’ We would make these crazy scared faces and looked like idiots because it was this really silly acting.”

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Though he’d made his name in film, Ruck’s career since “Twister” has leaned heavily on television. He played Stuart on 145 episodes of “Spin City” and has put in time on shows like “Medium,” “Stargate: Atlantis,” “Boston Legal,” “Cougar Town,” “Persons Unknown,” “Fringe,” and “CSI: Miami.”

Ruck’s biggest credit since “Twister” is, of course, “Succession.” On the hit HBO series, Ruck played Connor Roy, the oft-forgotten son of Brian Cox’s irascible CEO Logan Roy. He told Pop Culture Planet that he didn’t realize the show was funny until the fourth episode, when his character took over a charity event. “When we read that script aloud, people were howling at the table. People from HBO, I mean, they were crying,” he said. “That’s when I realized what the tone was and that we were doing this sort of tightrope walk between drama and comedy.”

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Sean Whalen played Allan Sanders in “Twister,” yet another member of Jo’s team trying to get the Dorothy airborne. The part was a relatively small one, but the “People Under the Stairs” star prepared extensively anyway. He told “Don’t Go Out There” that he got to set and learned he’d be working primarily opposite Alan Ruck. “When we got there, I got in the car … and I said, ‘Who do you think we are to each other?’ And he said, ‘Dude. We’re Sean and Alan in a truck.” Whalen was disappointed until his scene partner clarified things. “He goes, ‘Look, this movie is about the tornadoes, it’s not about us,'” he recalled.

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Whalen is a prolific character actor, having put in appearances on projects like “Hannah Montana,” “Lost,” “Scrubs,” and “Halloween II.” You may have spotted him in “Revenge,” “Castle,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” or “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.” He’s also been in “Superstore,” “Shameless,” “Ghosts,” “The Righteous Gemstones,” and many, many more.

These days, Whalen also directs. In 2024, he directed himself in a horror movie called “Crust,” about a man whose dirty socks gain sentience and join up to form a creature. He told PopHorror that the movie started as an off-the-cuff remark. “It came about because I had a meeting with some producers who were lamenting how expensive horror is, and I just said, ‘You guys are overthinking it. Just do a sock monster in a laundromat, one location,'” he said. Who said filmmaking was tough?

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Scott Thomson played a character called “Preacher” in “Twister,” and if you don’t remember much about him aside from his tendency to call tornadoes something religious like “the Finger of God,” then you’re not alone. Thomson told Cult Film Freaks that he was disappointed the script didn’t give him more to work with, revealing that he tried to convince Jan de Bont to let him do more. “He wasn’t really interested in getting into the minutia of our characters,” Thomson shared. “I tried to get some time with him… I’d say: ‘I’m called The Preacher … So this is my take … I feel like I’m a preacher’s son who went over to the dark side of science and yet still had my roots in my Baptist Evangelist background.’ But there was no time to explore that.” Instead of being proud of Preacher, he joked, “I usually just tell people I was the guy in the cow suit.”

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Thomson went on to appear in films like “Jack Frost,” “Blast from the Past,” and “Clockstoppers.” The end of the 2000s brought him a few roles that reunited him with his “Twister” co-stars, including a spot on “Big Love” with Bill Paxton and an episode of “True Blood,” which occasionally starred Lois Smith. These days, he appears to be retired; his most recent roles are in 2012’s “Vamps” and the 2016 football film “The Greater.”

Character actor Joey Slotnick starred in “Twister” as a guy named Joey, one of the more tech-obsessed members of Jo’s group of storm chasers. He told The AV Club that “Twister” was his first role in a big production, recalling that he had no idea what a set like that would be like. “‘Twister’ was an insane shoot. I knew nothing,” he said. “We were in the middle of nowhere for months. But I befriended Phil Hoffman, and there were a lot of good people there.”

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Though he’s done many, many things since then, “Twister” still gets Slotnick recognized. Whenever it happens, he said, “I think, ‘Oh my god.’ And then, of course, the next question people ask is, ‘Are you still acting?'”

He is, indeed, still acting, including spending time in ad campaigns for Verizon and e*trade. Since “Twister,” you may have spotted him in “Hollow Man,” “The Office,” “Pushing Daisies,” or “Nip/Tuck.” He played a rival plastic surgeon named Dr. Merril Bobolit on the latter show, telling The AV Club that the Ryan Murphy show was fun to film. “Those first two or three seasons are really, really good, and weird, and funky,” he said. “Bobolit was a little nutty. When he’s giving the dog a little CPR? That was really fun.” He also had a pivotal part in “Drive-Away Dolls;” click here if you need that ending explained.

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