For more than seven months, Walton Goggins watched a Western every day. John Ford's films, Sergio Leone's Dollars trilogy, episodes of Gunsmoke'the actor saw them all as he shot Fallout, the postapocalyptic TV series in which he stars. Half the time, he binged for research; Goggins thought of his character, the fictional 1950s-style movie star Cooper Howard, as a peer of cowboy-playing performers such as Alan Ladd. 'I didn't look at them as Walton. I really looked at them as Cooper Howard,' he told me last spring on the set of Fallout's second season. 'It was like '' He slipped into character, making a dejected expression as if envious of Ladd's career. 'Okay, yeah, Alan got that role, and he was great in Shane,' Goggins, as Cooper, drawled. 'I should have taken that, and I should have taken that television pilot.' He laughed. 'I should have done Gunsmoke. Why didn't I do that'!' But the other half of the time, Goggins explained, he just needed something to stay sane. He also plays...
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