Walton Goggins gives knockout performances in 'The White Lotus' and 'Fallout.' Here are 6 things you probably don't know about him.

• Walton Goggins is in the buzzy shows "The White Lotus" and "Fallout."
• The actor rose to fame in the early 2000s in projects including "The Shield" and "Justified."
• He told Business Insider he started his career with only $300 in his pocket.

Walton Goggins is on a streak of buzzy performances.

This year he has played the mysterious Rick Hatchett in "The White Lotus" season three, and reprised his role as televangelist Baby Billy Freeman in "The Righteous Gemstones."

Last year, he traveled across a nuclear wasteland as an irradiated gunslinger known as the Ghoul in Amazon's "Fallout."

Prior to that, he built up a healthy list of performances that cemented him as one of the most reliable faces in Hollywood. So when audiences spot him in projects like "Django Unchained," "Sons of Anarchy," and "The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey," they know he'll deliver something special.

Here are some things you might not know about Goggins.

Goggins started his career in Los Angeles with only $300

Goggins' early career earned him a reputation as "that guy," who audiences recognized from other shows and movies without knowing his name. He worked his way up from minor appearances in TV shows and movies like "Beverly Hills, 90210," "NYPD Blue," and "The Next Karate Kid."

"You know, I'm a poor kid from Georgia. I come from very humble beginnings and I've never been afraid of work in my life," he told Business Insider last year. "I moved to Los Angeles when I was 19 years old. I had $300 in my pocket. I had enough to last a month. And the first morning I was in LA I had a job at a health club.

"I did that until I decided I was going to start my own business, and I started a valet parking company. I had that for a couple of years. I sold cowboy boots. I became a personal trainer. But along with all of that I was very fortunate to start working as an actor straight away."

Goggins and the director Nadia Conners have been married for 14 years

Goggins has been married twice. In 2001, he married Leanne Kaun, a Canadian woman who owned a dog-walking business. The couple were estranged when she died in 2004, Canyon News reported.

The actor addressed his wife's death in an interview with The Daily Beast in 2019, saying: "I drifted for upwards of three years after that," he said. "It took me a really long time to come back from it. If it weren't for the people in my life that cared about me, that stepped in and helped me understand that life goes on, I don't know what would have happened."

In 2005, Goggins met Nadia Conners on what, unknown to him, was a blind date.

"When I got her home she said, 'You're gonna ask for my number, right?' I said, 'Of course I am.' So, then, I called her the next day, we hung out, and six months later she said, 'Wait a minute. You didn't know that we were on a blind date, did you?' I said, 'No, I had no idea! My friend never told me!'" he told "The Talk" in 2019.

The pair got married in 2011, the same year that their son, Augustus Goggins, was born.

He took his family on a road trip across the US during the pandemic.

In February 2025, GQ profiled Goggins in a lengthy article about his life and career after "Fallout" and ahead of "The White Lotus" season three. The opening paragraph explained that Goggins and his family bought a Mercedes van during the pandemic and traveled across America in it.

He documented the journey on Instagram, and in June 2021 he wrote: "Damn I love being on the road… it's a state of being for me."

Goggins co-owns Mulholland Distillery.

Plenty of actors have alcohol brands, and Goggins co-owns Mulholland Distilling with his friend, Matthew Alper. The company makes whiskey, gin, and gluten-free vodka.

When speaking to Garden & Gun, Goggins explained why he started the company: "Well, I'm not going to sell toothpaste, you know? And I'm not really good at selling anything. But I am good at living my life in a certain way, and I think people from the South by and large have to sign a contract when you're born that when you're of age, you have to have a sundowner at night.

"When my friend Matthew Alper, who was one of the best cameramen in the business, said he wanted to start distilling, I said, 'I'd like to go on this journey with you.'"

He's best friends with 'The White Lotus' cameo star Sam Rockwell.

While audiences expect surprises when watching "The White Lotus," Sam Rockwell's cameo in the third season was particularly unexpected.

In episode five, Rockwell delivers a monologue to Goggins' character about living a hedonistic life and exploring his sexuality.

In real life, the two actors are best friends. In an interview with Vanity Fair about the scene, Goggins said: "We did a movie together like 14, 15 years ago [Cowboys & Aliens], and he has been one of my best and dearest friends over the last 15 years of my life. So that is both a positive and a negative in the sense that we haven't worked together since then.

"Further complicating this collaboration is that Sam is my hero. He's really one of the guys in my generation that I look up to, and he knows that. So coming into this experience, there was a certain amount of anxiety, meaning I didn't want to let my friend down."

Goggins lost his front teeth, twice.

Goggins had some dental work done when he was younger after an accident during baseball practice.

"I showed up late to baseball practice in 5th grade, and I had to take a lap and I was running to centerfield, and all I heard was 'Walton.' And I turn around and I caught a baseball right in my mouth and literally my two front teeth were on the ground next to me," he told "Conan" in 2016.

The actor recovered, but he had a second accident not long afterward.

"They healed and the roots connected. 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 said.