Goggins moved to
Los Angeles at nineteen, working at
LA Fitness and a valet parking business while taking acting classes and auditioning. Goggins played
Shane Vendrell in the
FX drama series
The Shield. He formed the production company
Ginny Mule Pictures, which produced four films:
The Accountant (a short film which won an
Academy Award for Live Action Short Film),
Chrystal (
Sundance Dramatic Competition),
Randy and the Mob, and
That Evening Sun (which won the
South by Southwest Special Jury Prize). They later created the drama series
Rectify. Goggins was set to play the lead and
AMC had bought the pilot script, written by McKinnon, a role which went to
Aden Young, when the series later went to
Sundance TV. Goggins had a major supporting role as a deadly death row inmate being hunted by the
titular antagonists in the film
Predators. He played Boyd Crowder in the pilot episode for the
FX drama series
Justified. Before Goggins was cast, Boyd was intended to die in the pilot episode, but
Graham Yost kept the character when the character scored highly with test audiences. Goggins joined the main cast for the second season in May 2010. He was nominated for a
Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his role on
Justified. In 2011, he appeared in "Code of the West", a commercial for
Ram Truck's "Guts & Glory" campaign. He appeared in
Cowboys & Aliens as Hunt, a bandit formerly in the employ of the protagonist. He played a sadistic overseer and slave fighting trainer in the western film
Django Unchained. Goggins played a transgender sex worker in the
FX drama series
Sons of Anarchy. He previously worked with the show's creator,
Kurt Sutter, when the latter was a writer and executive producer on
The Shield. The name "Venus Van Dam" is a play on the undercover name "Cletus Van Damme" used by
The Shield character Shane Vendrell. He played Chris Mannix in
The Hateful Eight and Lee Russell in the
HBO dark comedy series
Vice Principals.
The New York Times critic Mike Hale wrote, "Walton Goggins makes a habit of being the best thing about the television shows he's in." In 2018, Goggins played Lawrence in
Maze Runner: The Death Cure, Mathias Vogel in
Tomb Raider, and Sonny Burch in
Ant-Man and the Wasp. That same year, he made a guest appearance in the
CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory as a jealous husband. In 2019, he played the lead character in the CBS
sitcom The Unicorn and starred in the comedy series
The Righteous Gemstones, alongside
Vice Principals costar
Danny McBride. In 2020, Goggins voiced part of the true crime podcast
Deep Cover: The Drug Wars. Goggins was cast as Jay Whittle / The Hero in the
Amazon Prime Video comedy miniseries ''
I'm a Virgo. In 2024, he played Cooper Howard / The Ghoul in the Amazon Prime Video drama series Fallout, and Peter Tomarken in The Luckiest Man in America, based on an actual incident involving a contestant on the Tomarken-hosted game show Press Your Luck''. The actor designed a series of active eyewear which he promoted in a co-branded commercial with
GoDaddy that aired during
Super Bowl LIX in 2025. This was his first appearance in a Super Bowl commercial. Goggins joined the ensemble cast for
the third season of the anthology series
The White Lotus. ==Personal life==