Paul Fix (born March 13 1901, Dobbs Ferry, New York - died October 14 1983, Los Angeles) was an American film and television character actor, best known for his work in westerns. Fix appeared in over a hundred movies and dozens of television shows over a 56-year career spanning from 1925 to 1981.

A veteran of the Navy during World War I, Fix became an incredibly busy character actor who got his start in local productions around his New York home. By the 1920's he had moved to Hollywood and performed in the first of almost 350 movie and television appearances. In the 1930's, he became friends with John Wayne, coaching him acting, and eventually appearing as a featured player in about 27 of his films. Many of his early characters were scoundrels of one sort or the other; as he matured, he took on more benevolent, avuncular roles.

Fix worked in early films such as Lucky Star (1929),and became a regular performer for the film's director, Frank Borzage, on a further eight occasions. But he is remembered today mainly for his role as Marshal Micah Torrance on the TV Series The Rifleman, and as Dr. Mark Piper in the second pilot episode of Star Trek, "Where No Man Has Gone Before". When NBC picked up Star Trek as a series, Fix was replaced as the Enterprise medical officer by DeForest Kelley as Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy. Fix also appeared as the presiding judge in To Kill a Mockingbird in 1962. In 1979, he appeared with Peter Fonda and Brooke Shields in Wanda Nevada.

Leonard Maltin and Fix both maintained that Wayne copied his famous manner of walking from Fix. Fix also co-wrote the screenplay for Wayne's film Tall in the Saddle.

Other television credits included The Adventures of Superman (1953-1954, with Anthony Caruso, Joseph Mell, and Elisha Cook, Jr.), recurring appearances as District Attorney Hale on Perry Mason (1957-1963), The Twilight Zone (1964), The F.B.I. (1965-1973, with Marj Dusay, Clint Howard, Steve Ihnat, Paul Carr and series-regular Stephen Brooks), The Time Tunnel (1966, with James Darren, Whit Bissell, Lee Meriwether and Paul Carr), Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1966), The Wild Wild West (1966-1967, with Sarah Marshall, Michael Dunn and Anthony Caruso), Owen Marshall: Counselor at Law (1971, with DeForest Kelley) and Mannix (1972, with Rex Holman and Byron Morrow). He appeared in the Battlestar Galactica episode "Take the Celestra" as Commander Kronus (1979). He again appeared with DeForest Kelley in the movie Night of the Lepus (1972).

Fix died in Los Angeles, California, as a result of kidney failure.

One of the busiest character actors in the industry, Paul Fix appeared in more than 300 films during his career. He began in local theater and repertory companies in upstate New York, and journeyed to Hollywood in the early 1920s. Unlike many supporting actors, who basically play different versions of the same character throughout their career, Fix was tremendously versatile, and played everything from a cackling, gabby Irish railroad engineer to a cold-eyed hired gunfighter. Early in his career Fix became friends with John Wayne (I), and the two remained close for the rest of their lives, with Fix appearing in many of Wayne's films. The role Paul Fix will be most remembered for is that of Micah Torrance, the easy-going but tough marshal of North Fork, in the Chuck Connors (I) TV series "Rifleman, The" (1958).

Paul Fix, the well-known movie and TV character actor who played Sheriff Michah Torrance on the TV series "The Rifleman," was born Peter Paul Fix on March 9, 1901 in Dobbs Ferry, New York to brew-master Wilhelm Fix and his wife, the former Louise C. Walz. His mother and father were German immigrants who had left their Black Forest home and arrived in New York City in the 1870s. (The name "Fix" is of Latin/Germanic origin, and is derived from St. Vitus and means "animated" or "vital.") Besides Peter Paul, the Fix family consisted of two girls and three boys, the youngest of whom was six years older than the future actor. Peter Paul's childhood was a happy one. He and his family lived on the 200-acre property on which the Manilla Anchor Brewery, where his father was brew-master, was situated. Such was the importance of Fix to the brewery that when he died at the age of 62 on the eve of America's entry into the First World War (two years after his 54-year old wife had died), the brewery closed. The orphaned Peter Paul, who kept to himself a lot and had a vivid imagination, was sent to live with his married sisters, first one who lived nearby in Yonkers, and then to another in Zanesville, Ohio. The just-turned-17-year-old Peter Paul Fix joined the U.S. Navy on March 12, 1918, and spent his state-side service time during World War I in Newport, Rhode Island and Charleston, South Carolina. He first tread the boards as an actor while a sailor stationed in Newport, when the baby-faced salt (who looked much younger than his age) was one of six gobs chosen to play female roles in the Navy Relief Show "HMS Pinafore." The Navy staging of the Gilbert and Sullivan operetta was a big hit and chalked up a run of several weeks in Providence and Boston. Fix was assigned as an able bodied seaman to the troopship U.S.S. Mount Vernon, which was torpedoed by a German U-boat off the coast of France but did not sink as it was run aground. The rest of Fix's naval career was less exciting, and he was demobilized on September 5, 1919. After his discharge, Fix went back to his girlfriend Frances (Taddy) Harvey, whom he had left behind in Zanesville. He and Taddy were married in 1922 and they moved to California as Fix had always wanted to live in a warm climate. Fix and his bride settled in Hollywood, not so much because he had set ideas about becoming an actor but because he didn't know what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. He liked writing and acting in local plays, and soon became friends with the fellow tyro actor Clark Gable, who was his own age. Fix and Gable were discovered by the stage actress Pauline Frederick, who hired them to be members of her touring troupe that traveled by train the length of the West Coast putting on plays. In all, Fix - who had informally renamed himself Paul Peter - appeared in 20 plays with Gable. Paul Fix had one of his earliest acting roles on celluloid in the mid-1920s, appearing in a silent Western starring William S. Hart. The Western genre eventually would become the one he was most identified with. He played uncredited bit parts and small roles in silents before getting his first credited role in an early talkie (which was part silent and part talking), "The First Kiss" (1928), which starred future Hollywood superstar Gary Cooper and the dame that drove King Kong ape, Fay Wray. In all, Fix appeared in 300-400 films. The Western programmers of the silent and early talkie days could be shot in less than a week. In 1925, Taddy gave birth to their daughter Marilyn, who eventually would marry Harry Carey Jr., the son of one of the first great Western superstars. They would have three more children and become part of the extended family gathered around the director John Ford. In his career, Paul Fix would appear with another Western legend, John Wayne, in 26 films, starting in 1931 with "Three Girls Lost." Urged on by Loretta Young, Fix became an acting coach for the young actor, and Wayne later paid him back when he became a star by having Fix appear in his movies. (The Duke also was a pat of the close-knit group that collected around John Ford.) With the Duke's patronage, the kinds of roles that Fix played changed. He had been typed as villains in the 1930s, but in the 40s, he began assaying a better class of character. Paul Fix was also a screenwriter, and is credited as the writer on three films: "Tall in the Saddle" (1944), "Ring of Fear" (1954), and "The Notorious Mr. Monks" (1958). His favorites parts included playing the stricken passenger in the John Wayne picture "The High and the Mighty" (1954), Elizabeth Taylor's father in George Stevens' classic "Giant" (1956), the grandfather of the eponymous "Bad Seed" (1956), and the judge in "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962). His last screen appearance was in the Brooke Shields movie "Wanda Nevada" (1979), but he is most famous for appearing in the recurring role of Sheriff Micah Torrance in the popular Western TV series "The Rifleman" (1958). As of 1981, the 80-year old Fix was still getting mail from all over the world from "Rifleman" fans. Paul Fix died October 14, 1983 of kidney failure. He was survived by his daughter Marilyn and son-in-law Harry "Dobe" Carey, three grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.