Billy Bob Thornton
ALL ABOUT BILLY BOB THORNTON
Full Name: William Robert Thornton
Date of Birth: 4 August 1955
Place of Birth: Hot Springs, Arkansas, USA
Spouse:
Angelina Jolie (5 May 2000 - 27 May 2003) (divorced)
Pietra Dawn Cherniak (18 February 1993 - April 1997) (divorced) 2 children
Cynda Williams (1990 - 1992) (divorced)
Toni Lawrence (5 April 1986 - 1988) (divorced)
Melissa Lee Gatlin (1978 - 1980) (divorced) 1 child
Trade Mark: Houston Colt .45’s hat.
Bio:
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Southerner
Billy Bob Thornton is the oldest son of high school basketball coach Billy Ray Thornton and Virginia Faulkner Thornton, a psychic who predicted his 1997 Oscar® win. Born in Hot Springs, Arkansas on August 4 (that makes him a Leo), Billy Bob was named after (respectively) his father (Billy) and his mother’s grandfather (Bob). Yes, Billy Bob is his legal, given name. At the advanced age of seven months, he became a sensation in the local papers by setting a record as the heaviest infant in Clark County at 30 pounds.
He was followed by two brothers: Jimmy Don and John David.
It was a different kind of South in the mid-1950s to early 1960s. Billy Bob can recall seeing the segregated water fountains and restrooms facilities of the pre-Civil Rights era, as well as the abject poverty of the rural corners of the state. Residing in a small cabin in the woods of Alpine, Arkansas (population 100), the Thornton clan often subsisted on the local game that Billy Bob’s maternal grandfather, a forest ranger, culled from the surrounding wilderness. Their cabin had no electricity or running water, and sometimes up to 15 members of the family lived there.
When Billy Bob turned two, his uncle Don Faulkner, a charming, footloose musician whose expertise included playing the saw, gave him something every little boy of that era coveted: a Roy Rogers guitar! With Uncle Don’s gift, Billy Bob would do his junior Elvis impersonation atop–of all things–a circus foot-stand for elephants that somehow wound up in the Thorntons’ backyard.
In 1963, the Thorntons moved to Malvern, Arkansas, a quintessential all-American small town noteworthy as “The Brick Capital of the World.” To make ends meet, Virginia did psychic readings from their home, taking trade in food when the clients had no money. Billy Bob has noted that, when your mother is a psychic and your father is a basketball coach, “It sets you apart.”
In Malvern, third-grader Billy Bob began writing short stories, prompted by his mother (an English major), who introduced him to the works of such Southern writers William Faulkner, Flannery O’Connor, and Erskine Caldwell (a major influence on Billy Bob’s work). He also took up acting for the first time, playing a wise man in a school nativity play. The first line he delivered in his acting debut was, “Hark!” (although it came out “Harp!”). His first directing gig was a grade-school production of Dracula.
As children, he and his younger brother Jimmy were eager participants in the family ritual of listening to albums each night before going to bed, absorbing everything from Elvis Presley, Ray Price, and Jim Reeves to The Beatles and other British Invasion stars. At one point, Virginia actually brought Billy Bob out to the highway so that they could wave at Elvis when The King’s tour bus passed by. After lights out, Billy Bob and Jimmy would lie in their beds and listen to classic rock from station KAAY on their transistor radio. Billy Bob took his first crack at the drums when Virginia bought him his own drum set for his ninth birthday. A year later, he made his performance debut at a PTA meeting, delivering Barry Sadler’s patriotic hit, The Ballad of the Green Beret. The members of the popular Malvern rock band, the Yardleys, allowed the twelve-year-old Billy Bob to try his hand on a professional set of red Ludwig drums. Inspired by the inventive and witty classic rock of Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, he started forming his own bands, beginning with the British Invasion-inspired McCoveys (named after legendary baseball player Willie McCovey).
In high school, Billy Bob became a popular local baseball star with a talent for pitching (thanks to his father, Billy Ray, who hung a tire from a tree so that Billy Bob could practice delivering sliders and curveballs through the center). His high school rock band, Stone Cold Fever, performed Creedence Clearwater Revival covers. Throughout high school, he would spend his weekends playing drums and singing in the style of his musical idols wherever he could, from VFW clubs to roadhouses where there was chicken wire across the front of the stage. Coached by Malvern High School’s drama teacher, Maudie Treadway, Billy Bob studied acting and eventually played the lead in the school play Egad, What a Cad.
Shortly after Billy Bob’s graduation from high school in 1973 and mere days after his 18th birthday, his father Billy Ray passed away at the age of 44 from lung cancer likely caused by exposure to chemicals at a factory job. During his father’s final months, Billy Bob devotedly cared for him, often cradling Billy Ray in his arms as he carried him up to his room.
One Man, Many Hats
One of Billy Bob’s favorite things to collect is baseball “gimme” caps–anything with a logo on it. The variety of hats make a fitting metaphor for his early adulthood.
Following high school, Billy Bob joined a local soul group named Blue and the Blue Velvets and eventually formed his own soul group Hot ’Lanta, after the Allman Brothers song of the same name. Eventually, he and his pals Mike and Nick Shipp formed Nothin’ Doin’. Because the Shipp boys lived in Benton and Billy Bob lived without a car in Malvern, Mike would pick him up for rehearsals, and Billy Bob wound up working for a spell at the Shipp family’s equipment rental company. Billy Bob played drums and shared lead vocals with the Brothers Shipp as they began performing for colleges and high schools throughout Arkansas and Texas.
He tried out as a baseball player for the Kansas City Royals, but a fateful, wild pitch during his first at-bat caught him in the shoulder and broke his collarbone, putting an end to his athletic career. He also did time as a roadie, setting up mikes for bands like Lighthouse and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. During this period, he let his hair grow really, really, REALLY long. Here’s an amusing webpage put up by a former member of a short-lived band Billy Bob belonged to in the 1970s called Cottonwood. We weren’t kidding about the long hair, were we?
Over the next few years, Billy Bob led an eclectic working life. At times he toiled in local businesses as a grocery store clerk, a painter, a drill press operator in a machine shop, assembled screen doors, made chains for bikes and chainsaws, drove a bulldozer, hauled hay, and managed to get through a stint at the local saw mill with all his fingers intact. Ask him to tell you a saw mill joke, and Billy Bob will hold up his index finger and his pinky and say, “This is a saw mill worker ordering five beers.” At about this time, he also started acquiring the first of his trademark tattoos.
In 1977, Billy Bob and his lifelong best friend, aspiring novelist Tom Epperson, decided to take a crack at the Big Apple. Billy Bob would establish his acting career, and Tom would write the Great American Novel. They drove to New York and spent a terrifying ten hours in the city (which was then in the grips of the Son of Sam killings–check out Spike Lee’s movie SUMMER OF SAM to get a sense of what New York was like back then) getting lost and hiding out in their motel room. The one thing they took away from that ill-fated trip was the fact that the Statue of Liberty was actually green, not white.
Billy Bob hopped a Trailways bus to the West Coast for the first time with Tom Epperson in 1978, living briefly with his Aunt Sally and her warm and friendly kin in San Diego as he tried to figure out if a career in acting or rock stardom was right for him. There, he did construction work and played briefly with a Mexican rock and roll band. Returning to Malvern, he married Melissa Gaithers, and they had a daughter, Amanda. They eventually divorced.
He studied psychology for two semesters at Henderson State University, where he psyched out HSU pool hustlers with his trick shot skills. With a little help from then-Governor Bill Clinton, he landed a job laying asphalt for the state highway department. He also worked as a recreation director for a health care facility (promoted from the entry-level position of painter and bedpan cleaner), where he first encountered the lives of people consigned to the “state nervous hospital.”
For a time, Billy Bob and the Shipp brothers relocated their Nothin’ Doin’ act to Houston, Texas. During a performance at the famed Houston rock ‘n’ roll club Carti’s, the band was approached by Scott Weiss of Lone Wolf Productions, ZZ Top’s management company. Because their sound was identical to the bearded rockers, Weiss pitched the trio on the idea of touring as a ZZ Top tribute band. Nothin’ Doin’ became Tres Hombres (after the ZZ Top album of the same name) and began touring and building a solid reputation. They released an album, GUNSLINGER, in 1983. Tres Hombres performed at various rock festivals, opening for established acts such as Humble Pie, MC5, Hank Williams Jr., Ted Nugent, the Earl Scruggs Review, Black Oak Arkansas, and Richie Havens, and headlined in legendary venues such as the Electric Company in Denison, TX, and Rocker’s, Fitzgerald’s, and Rockefeller’s in Houston. Their sets sometimes included on-stage appearances with a diamondback rattlesnake and a longhorn steer.
Hollywood Bound
In 1984, Billy Bob moved back to California with Tom Epperson to get his acting career off the ground. They settled on the Westside, near the studios. The pickings for a Southern boy with a genuine Southern accent and moniker proved slim. Casting directors hired actors from New Jersey instead of Billy Bob to play hillbillies and rednecks. He started taking acting classes with Hollywood’s West Coast Ensemble and supported himself selling pens by the phone, working for an answering service, whatever it took. Malnutrition brought on by his struggling actor’s lifestyle (all he could afford to eat were potatoes) landed him in the hospital with myocarditis, a serious inflammation of the heart. Fortunately, with the support of good friends like his West Coast Ensemble classmate Coby Lee (whose sofa became a frequent Billy Bob crash spot) and a kindly doctor (a fellow Arkansan who treated Billy Bob without charging him), Billy Bob recovered and settled in East Hollywood. From time to time, Governor Bill Clinton would call Virginia Thornton just to find out how her boy was doing out in Hollywood. Virginia encouraged her son by telling him that she could see him eventually making it in Hollywood. She envisioned him starring with Burt Reynolds, and she had a premonition of herself attending the Oscars with him.
Billy Bob married again, for a short time, to fellow actor Toni Lawrence (who is now a successful Los Angeles-based ceramicist and sculptor). He endured more struggling actor gigs as the manager of a Shakey’s Pizza Parlour and a waiter at posh Hollywood gatherings. He started to land small parts on TV (on shows like MATLOCK, KNOTS LANDING, DIVORCE COURT) and in films like THE MAN WHO BROKE 1000 CHAINS, SOUTH OF RENO, and HUNTER’S BLOOD (which nabbed him the all-important SAG card). It was in a dressing trailer on the set of THE MAN WHO BROKE 1000 CHAINS that, in a fit of frustration over the direction of his career, Billy Bob created the character of state nervous hospital resident Karl Childers from SLING BLADE. He developed Karl in a one-man stage show he created titled Swine Before Pearls.
Tragically, Billy Bob’s greatest artistic inspiration–his talented brother, Jimmy Don, who had settled in San Francisco where he worked as a chef for the Hard Rock Café–abruptly died from a heart attack in 1988. He was only 30. Because of Billy Bob’s heart condition, his family back home assumed that it was he who had died when they got the call. Billy Bob was heartbroken by the loss of his brother, whom he has always considered far more talented than himself. Billy Bob would eventually help to keep Jimmy Don’s genius alive by recording some of his songs for his two CDs, PRIVATE RADIO and THE EDGE OF THE WORLD.
One Christmas Eve, as he was handing out hors d’oeuvres to a swanky industry crowd, Billy Bob struck up a conversation with an older, German gentleman who advised him to pursue writing in order to make his niche in Hollywood. Only after he went back into the kitchen did Billy Bob learn that he had just received sage advice from Billy Wilder, the writer-director of SUNSET BOULEVARD, THE APARTMENT, STALAG 17, and DOUBLE INDEMNITY. Billy Bob took the advice to heart and focused on writing with his partner,
Tom Epperson.
The acting career picked up in the early 1990s when Billy Bob–after a brief stint on the short-lived Fox series THE OUTSIDERS–connected with Harry Thomason, the producer of DESIGNING WOMEN and EVENING SHADE. A fellow Arkansan, Harry Thomason cast Billy Bob in a couple of episodes of EVENING SHADE, placing him opposite Burt Reynolds (and fulfilling Virginia Thornton’s first prophecy!). Then, with the election of President Bill Clinton, came HEARTS AFIRE, the clever Washington D.C.-situated comedy starring John Ritter and Markie Post that ran for three seasons on CBS. Thomason cast Billy Bob as John Ritter’s best friend and Beltway insider Billy Bob Davis. Billy Bob demonstrated tremendous comedy chops, prompting TV Guide Magazine’s Couch Critic to comment that he was “. . . a sharp comic who, with his dry drawl, could make a telephone bill funny.” He also established a warm and close personal friendship and solid professional relationship with the affable Ritter.
The Motion Picture Career
The Epperson-Thornton writing team hit the big-time in 1992 with their gritty thriller ONE FALSE MOVE, which was directed by Carl Franklin and also starred Bill Paxton. An uncompromisingly brutal crime drama, ONE FALSE MOVE wound up on many of that year’s ten-best lists. It is still regarded as one of the clarion warning shots of the indie film boom of the 1990s. By then, Billy Bob was married for the third time, to the gifted actress and singer Cynda Williams, his leading lady in ONE FALSE MOVE. While the marriage was short-lived, they both received high marks for their performances in that film–he as the vicious drug dealer Ray Malcolm and she as the haunting Fantasia. The team hit again with the 1995 HBO crime drama DON’T LOOK BACK, in which Billy Bob appeared with Eric Stoltz, John Corbett, Dwight Yoakam, Amanda Plummer, and Peter Fonda. They followed up by scripting A FAMILY THING, a highly regarded 1996 feature film that starred Robert Duvall and James Earl Jones for United Artists.
While many actors in series television are unable to sustain a serious career in motion pictures, Billy Bob continued to make memorable appearances in such films as THE WINNER, for director Alex Cox, Paramount Pictures’ INDECENT PROPOSAL directed by Adrian Lyne, DEAD MAN helmed by director Jim Jarmusch for Miramax, and in TOMBSTONE, directed by George Cosmatos for Buena Vista Pictures. He has also appeared in the films ON DEADLY GROUND, BOUND BY HONOR, FOR THE BOYS, and THE STARS FELL ON HENRIETTA.
It during this period that he married Pietra Cherniak and started their family. They had two boys: sons William (in 1994) and Harry (in 1995). The boys were named respectively after an legendary Arkansas figure, William Langston, and TV Producer Harry Thomason. During the terrible Southern California wildfires of 1993, their Malibu home was burned to the ground. But that year also proved to be an important turning point for Billy Bob, as it was the year he brought Karl Childers to the screen in the award-winning short film SOME FOLKS CALL IT A SLING BLADE. Looking to develop the story of Karl Childers further, Billy Bob wrote out a feature-length screenplay in longhand, finishing it on Christmas Eve, 1994, at his mother’s kitchen table in Little Rock.
In 1996, Billy Bob–backed by The Shooting Gallery production company and a budget of about $1 million– returned to Arkansas to film SLING BLADE, choosing the town of Benton as the setting for Karl Childers’ story. He assembled a dream cast that included his acting mentor Robert Duvall, J.T. Walsh, and John Ritter, newcomers Lucas Black, Natalie Canerday, and Rick Dial (Billy Bob’s pal since elementary school), and such music luminaries as Dwight Yoakum, Colonel Bruce Hampton, and Vic Chestnutt. Billy Bob directed and starred, turning in the performance that changed his life practically overnight. Distributed by Miramax, SLING BLADE became a critically acclaimed and phenomenally popular feature film and firmly secured his status as a preeminent filmmaker. He also delivered in Karl Childers an indelible character forever woven into the popular American culture lexicon. For his efforts, he was honored with both an Academy AwardÒ for Best Adapted Screenplay and an Academy AwardÒ nomination for Best Actor. When he attended the Oscar ceremony in 1997, Virginia Thornton’s second prediction came true: she watched in person from the audience at the Shrine Auditorium as her oldest boy collected his award.
After the success of SLING BLADE, Billy Bob’s acting career shifted into overdrive. He co-starred in the action-adventure blockbuster ARMAGEDDON with Bruce Willis for producer Jerry Bruckheimer (the top-grossing film of 1998) and co-starred opposite Sean Penn, Jennifer Lopez, and Nick Nolte in U-TURN, directed by Oliver Stone. He appeared in PRIMARY COLORS with John Travolta and Emma Thompson for director Mike Nichols and HOMEGROWN with Hank Azaria and Kelly Lynch for Stephen Gyllenhaal.
Acclaim for his talent proved to be no one-time thing, as Billy Bob received a third Academy AwardÒ nomination and Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his celebrated work in the tightly woven 1998 drama A SIMPLE PLAN for director Sam Raimi, as well as a Best Supporting Actor award from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and a Best Supporting Actor nomination from the Screen Actors Guild.
For his second and third directorial outings, Billy Bob chose the comedy DADDY AND THEM, which he again wrote and starred in, and the best-selling Cormac McCarthy novel, the epic ALL THE PRETTY HORSES, starring Matt Damon, Penelope Cruz, and Henry Thomas. He partnered again with Tom Epperson to write, THE GIFT, a moody, supernatural mystery starring Cate Blanchett as a character based closely on Virginia Thornton. The Sam Raimi-directed drama also starred Giovanni Ribisi, Greg Kinnear, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes, and Hillary Swank.
Billy Bob next starred in the dark comedy PUSHING TIN opposite John Cusack and Cate Blanchett. It was during the shoot of PUSHING TIN that he met Angelina Jolie, marrying her after her celebrated Oscar win in 2001. During their marriage, they adopted a son, Maddox, during Ms. Jolie’s tour of Cambodia as a U.N. Goodwill Ambassador.
Showing the versatility of his acting abilities, in 2001 Billy Bob Thornton starred in the caper comedy BANDITS for director Barry Levinson and co-starring Bruce Willis and Cate Blanchett; the Coen Brothers’ comic-noir thriller THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE, costarring Frances McDormand, Tony Shaloub, and Scarlett Johansson; and the heart-wrenching drama MONSTER’S BALL, with Halle Berry, Peter Boyle, and Heath Ledger. Each of the three performances drew unprecedented critical acclaim and resulted in Billy Bob being named Best Actor of 2001 by the National Board of Review, Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor in a Drama for THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE and Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy for BANDITS, and an American Film Institute Award nomination for Best Actor for THE MAN WHO WASN’T THERE.
His other recent film credits include the comedy WAKING UP IN RENO (which he also produced), co-starring Charlize Theron, Patrick Swayze, and Natasha Richardson for Miramax Films; the drama LEVITY, which costarred Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter, and Kirsten Dunst; and the thriller THE BADGE, with Patricia Arquette, William Devane, and Sela Ward. Throughout all this filmmaking frenzy, he and his good buddy Dwight Yoakam have formed their own production company, Meathouse Productions, through which he hopes to develop worthwhile film projects.
Billy Bob Thornton is currently celebrating a high-water mark in his motion picture career. He can currently be seen in Touchstone Pictures’ THE ALAMO, in which he portrays legendary frontiersman Davy Crockett. Most recently, he starred in and garnered a Golden Globe nomination (Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy) for his role in the critically acclaimed box office hit BAD SANTA. 2003 also saw Billy Bob’s appearances in the Coen Brothers’ romantic comedy INTOLERABLE CRUELTY (starring George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones) and Richard Curtis’ delightful romantic romp LOVE ACTUALLY (featuring Hugh Grant, Laura Linney, Emma Thompson, and Liam Neeson). He has recently wrapped THE ICE HARVEST with John Cusack and Connie Nielsen for director Harold Ramis in Chicago, and will segue in the fall of 2004 to Paramount’s baseball comedy THE BAD NEWS BEARS. To celebrate the release of the real-life football drama FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS for Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures, Billy Bob was awarded an important career honor: his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Never one to stay idle for long, Billy Bob is currently filming the stepfather-from-hell comedy MR. WOODCOCK, then will away to Newfoundland to film FADE OUT.
Back to His Musical Roots
In 1995, during the shooting of his film SLING BLADE in Arkansas, Billy Bob got together with some of his old band mates and held jam sessions for the film crew. He comfortably settled behind the drum kit, and soon found himself habitually setting up impromptu jam sessions for the crews on his films.
While spending time in Nashville, and at the urging of many of his mostly musician friends, Billy Bob returned to the recording studio and began jamming with many of Nashville’s local session musicians. Upon his return to Los Angeles, he started to write the songs for what would become his debut album, the dark, profoundly personal, and moving PRIVATE RADIO.
Prior to the recording of PRIVATE RADIO, he appeared on the album HOLLYWOOD GOES WILD (RPH Productions), a benefit CD for the Wildlife Waystation animal sanctuary. Billy Bob wanted to pay tribute to his late brother Jimmy—who, he admits, was a much better musician than he and credits as one of his musical influences growing up–by recording one of Jimmy’s original songs, Island Avenue. Asked why he contributed to the benefit project, Billy Bob commented, “Aside from it being a good cause, I wanted Jimmy to see his name on the credits of an album.”
In addition to his solo albums, Billy Bob has also appeared as a guest vocalist for the undisputed dean of the banjo, Earl Scruggs, on the album EARL SCRUGGS AND FRIENDS, performing a rendition of Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire; The Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash’s album DISTANCE BETWEEN, offering his take on Cash’s classic Long Black Veil; singing the lead on Brad Davis’ dark ballad Tell Me Son from Davis’ album I’M NOT GONNA LET MY BLUES BRING ME DOWN; and most recently a rap (with a canned beverage) called Bourgeois Pig for Styx’s CYCLORAMA album. He also performed back-up chores and recorded Bob Dylan’s Knocking On Heaven’s Door in his home studio for Warren Zevon’s Grammy-winning final album, THE WIND.
For his sophomore album, Billy Bob recorded THE EDGE OF THE WORLD. A true child of the sixties and a self-described hippie, Billy Bob Thornton views his music as an extension of his desires to tell compelling stories of the everyday man. At its core, THE EDGE OF THE WORLD was born of that desire, in many ways reflecting a journey of loss, discovery, and redemption that everyone who listens to it can relate to.
To perform works from both albums, Billy Bob formed a band, pulling together top session talent for his music: guitarist and mandolin player Brad Davis, former Guns ‘n’ Roses keyboard player Teddy Andreadis, lifelong songwriting partner and guitarist Mike Shipp, lead guitarist Randy Mitchell, guitarist Steve Bruton, singer Mica Roberts, bass player Steve Arnold, drummer Sam Bacco, and numerous guest stars, including Styx’ Tommy Shaw. The band’s tours have taken Billy Bob all across the United States, through Canada, and to Europe, with benefit performances for such worthy causes as Farm Aid, The American Heart Association, and the Gridiron Heroes. More recently, he has finished recording his latest album, CALIFORNIA POSSIBILITIES, and is prepping his next tour.
And Today
Billy Bob divides his free time between his home in Beverly Hills and his family in Arkansas. His mother Virginia, brother John David (a registered nurse whom Billy Bob calls “the brains of the family”), and much of their extended family reside in Little Rock. Meanwhile, he and his girlfriend, Connie Angland, are enjoying their delightful baby daughter, Bella (aka Daddy’s Li’l Punkin’).
When he is not busy with his acting and music careers, Billy Bob enjoys staying home, spending lots of time with his children, shooting pool (he remains an accomplished trick shot artist), rooting for the St. Louis Cardinals, shopping for music and vintage threads, and–on occasion–adding to his collection of tattoos. He also has his own line of stylish country-western-themed men’s shirts, designed by Dave Cadison of CadZoots. He enjoys meeting and talking with his fans as he encounters them and remains a popular public figure, beloved and famous for his endearing eccentricities and phobias as well as his generosity of spirit and talent.
Trivia:
He put crushed glass in his shoes for the movie: Sling Blade.
He likes milkshakes.
He says that it is likely that he won’t get married again because he doesn’t want to be married more times that Mickey Rooney.
He had a tattoo on his left arm of Angelina Jolie’s name. He had it replaced by an angel that is saying “Peace.”
His father was named Billy Ray, he was a basketball coach, he died of lung cancer. His mother was named Virginia, she is a psychic.
The songs on his album Beautiful Door are:
It’s Just Me
Restin’ Your Soul
In the Day
Beautiful Door
I Gotta Grow Up
Hearts Like Mine
Carnival Girl
Always Countin’
Pretty People
I Can Tell You
Hope for Glory
Boys Is Gone
The songs on his album Hobo are:
Hobo
I Used To Be A Lion
The Late Great Golden State
El Centro On Five Dollars A Day
Purple Passion
Your Blue Shadow
Orange County Suicide
Smooth Me Over
At Least We Dreamed
Gray Walls
The songs on his album The Edge of the World are:
Emily
Everybody Lies
Island Avenue
The Desperate One
Everybody’s Talking
Fast Hearts
Baby Can I Hold You
The Edge of the World
God
Pieces of a Man
Pieces of a Man (Part Two)
The Edge of the World (Reprise)
Do God Wop
Savior
Midnight Train
To the End of Time
The songs on his album Private Radio are:
Dark & Mad
Forever
Angelina
Starlight Lounge
Walk Of Shame
Smoking In Bed
Your Blue Shadow
That Mountain
He Was A Friend Of Mine
Private Radio
Beauty At The Back Door
Lost Highway
Billy Bob suffers from aviophobia (fear of flying), as well as chromophobia (fear of bright colours).
Billy Bob’s co-star in Bad Santa, Bernie Mac, took out a full page newspaper ad to congratulate him for receiving his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The ad read: ‘You deserve it! There is no badder Santa than you!’
Billy Bob wrote and appeared in: One False Move in 1992, A Family Thing, in 1996, The Gift in 2000, and Daddy and Them, in 2001.
Billy Bob threw out the first pitch on opening day for his favorite baseball team, the St. Louis Cardinals, in 2003.
Billy Bob has been a receptionist for an answering service, ballpoint pen saleman, hauled hay, operated a sawmill, and managed a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor.
Billy Bob has appeared in two videos for country singer Travis Tritt’s ‘Modern Day Bonnie and Clyde’, and ‘It’s a Long Way To Richmond’, in 2002.
Billy Bob and then-wife Angelina Jolie exchanged vials of their own blood in vials, to wear around each other’s necks.
Billy Bob gave up smoking cigarettes in 2001, after his role in the movie The Man Who Wasn’t There.
Billy Bob released his first solo record, Private Radio in 2000, on Lost Highway Records.
Billy Bob received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame on October 7th, 2004.
Billy Bob and his girlfriend Connie Angland had a child together in 2004, a daughter named Bella.
Billy Bob had two children with his fourth wife, Pietra Dawn Cherniak: two sons named William and Harry.
Billy had one child with Melissa Lee Gatlin, a daughter named Amanda.
Billy Bob was married to actress Angelina Jolie from 2000 until their divorce in 2003. They adopted a child together, a son named
Maddox Chivan, Billy Bob no longer sees him.
Billy Bob was married to Pietra Dawn Cherniak from 1993 until their divorce in 1997.
Billy Bob was married to Cynda Williams from 1990 until their divorce in 1992.
Billy Bob was married to Melissa Lee Gatlin from 1978 until their divorce in 1980.
Billy Bob was married to Toni Lawrence from 1986 until their divorce in 1988.
Billy released his album On the Edge of the World on Sanctuary/BMG Records in 2003.
Billy played drums for Jack Hammer (a South African band) on their album Jack of All Trades, which was released in 1987. The recordings were made in Los Angeles in 1985.
Billy released the book version of screenplay for Sling Blade in 1997.
Billy is the cousin of professional wrestlers: Terry Funk and Dory Funk Jr.
Billy owns a penthouse in Paris.
Billy’s father is of Irish ancestry, while his mother is half Choctaw Indian and half Italian.
Billy has stated that, of all the characters he has played, the one he enjoyed playing the most was Davy Crockett in The Alamo (2004).
Billy & Dwight Yoakam have started their own production company and are looking at producing movies and records together.
Billy said in an interview on the Oprah Winfrey Show that he’s phobic of antique furniture.
Billy has stated that he possibly has OCD. His most noted “problem” is his inability to use untensils (out of a fear that they’re not
properly cleaned) in restaurants & from catering companies on movie sets. He opts to use plastic untensils.
Billy said that he had to gain about 50 pounds for his role as the auto mechanic in U Turn (1997).
In high school, Billy played drums in a CCR cover-band called Stone Cold Fever.
Billy’s mother, a psychic, predicted he would work with Burt Reynolds. It came true when he did three episodes of CBS’s Evening Shade in 1990.
Billy has numerous tattoos. Among them are at least 6 on his arms (3 right, 3 left) and on his lower back/hip.
Billy Bob admitted that he was genuinely intoxicated during the filming of Bad Santa.
Billy Bob used to play in a band named Tres Hombres.
Billy Bob is approximately 6′ tall.
Billy was nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award in 1997 for Sling Blade, and again in 1999 for A Simple Plan.
Billy was nominated for a Golden Globe in 1999 for A Simple Plan.
Billy Bob was nominated in 1999 for an Academy Award for Best Actor in A Simple Plan.
Billy Bob won an Academy Award in 1997 for his writing on Sling Blade. He was also nominated for the Best Actor award, but didn’t
win.
Quotes:
“Acting is playing - it’s actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.”
“Every couple I know has side-by-side grave plots, but when we do it we’re the biggest weirdos on the block.”
“For our anniversary, I had a certificate drawn up that states I can never leave Angelina for eternity. It has the seal of the great state of Louisiana on it. I signed it in my own blood with a paintbrush.”
“Getting the nomination is like gravy. Winning would be like whatever is better than gravy.”
“I believe in running through the rain and crashing into the person you love and having your lips bleed on each other.”
“I don’t have a fear of flying; I have a fear of crashing.”
“I quit flying years ago. I don’t want to die with tourists.”
“I was the fattest baby in Clark County, Arkansas. They put me in the newspaper. It was like a prize turnip.”
“I’ve danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.”
“I’ve never heard of anybody smoking a joint and going on a rampage. It makes you lie around on the floor and look at the ceiling. What’s wrong with that?”
“If you love somebody let them know every day.”
“Just the other day, my assistant was on the line with Calvin Klein. Golly, I usually shop at Sears.”
“Man, I was drowning in sadness. And Angelina, she lifted me right up out of there.”
“Marketing is the devil.”
“Movies these days have made killers into funny people. What’s that all about? I’ve got kids and family and friends, and I don’t like bad things. I don’t think they’re funny, and it’s irresponsible to make movies that don’t show you how that’s not good.”
“Tower Records is like a temple to me. I’ll stay there for hours. Nobody can shop for records with me. It drives them out of their minds.”
“When people wear shoes that don’t fit them, it says something about their soul. Generally, I think it means they are good people.”
Filmography:
Billy Bob Thornton Filmography as an Actor:
2009 Peace Like a River
2009 Duplicity
2009 Manure
2008 The Informers
2008 Eagle Eye
2008 Tulia
2007 Mr. Woodcock
2006 The Astronaut Farmer
2006 School for Scoundrels
2005 The Bad News Bears
2005 The Ice Harvest
2004 Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson
2004 Friday Night Lights
2004 Chrystal
2004 The Alamo
2003 VH1 (Inside) Out: Warren Zevon - Keep Me in Your Heart
2003 Love Actually
2003 Intolerable Cruelty
2003 Soundstage: Farm Aid 2003
2003 Bad Santa
2003 Levity
2002 The Badge
2001 Bandits
2001 Saturday Night Live: Billy Bob Thornton
2001 Waking Up in Reno
2001 The Man Who Wasn’t There
2001 Daddy & Them
2001 Monster’s Ball
2000 South of Heaven, West of Hell
1999 Pushing Tin
1998 A Simple Plan
1998 Primary Colors
1998 Homegrown
1998 Armageddon
1998 King of the Hill: Nine Pretty Darn Angry Men
1997 Burn Hollywood Burn
1997 U-Turn
1997 Princess Mononoke
1997 The Apostle
1997 A Gun, A Car, A Blonde
1996 Don’t Look Back
1996 The Winner
1996 Sling Blade
1995 Dead Man
1994 On Deadly Ground
1994 Hearts Afire: Season 03
1994 Floundering
1993 Blood In Blood Out
1993 Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade
1993 Hearts Afire: Season 02
1993 Grey Knight
1993 Tombstone
1993 Indecent Proposal
1992 Trouble Bound
1992 Hearts Afire: Season 01
1991 One False Move
1991 Chopper Chicks in Zombietown
1991 For the Boys
1989 Going Overboard
1987 Hunter’s Blood
1987 South of Reno
Billy Bob Thornton Filmography as a Director:
2001 Daddy & Them
2000 All the Pretty Horses
1996 Sling Blade
Billy Bob Thornton Filmography as a Producer:
2006 The Astronaut Farmer
2000 All the Pretty Horses
Billy Bob Thornton Filmography as a Screenwriter:
2001 Daddy & Them
2000 The Gift
1996 Sling Blade
1996 A Family Thing
1996 Don’t Look Back
1993 Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade
1991 One False Move
Discography:
Albums:
2007 Beautiful Door
2005 Hobo
2003 Edge of the World
2001 Private Radio
Singles:
2006 Billy Bob Thornton: Napsterlive: August 18, 2005
Billy Bob Thornton Awards:
Academy
1998 Best Supporting Actor Simple Plan
1996 Best Actor Sling Blade
1996 Best Adapted Screenplay Sling Blade
American Film Institute
2001 Best Actor Man Who Wasn’t There
Broadcast Film Critics Association
1998 Best Supporting Actor Simple Plan
1998 Best Supporting Actor Primary Colors
Chicago Film Critics Association
1996 Best Actor Sling Blade
Golden Globe
2003 Best Actor - Musical or Comedy Bad Santa
2001 Best Actor - Musical or Comedy Bandits
2001 Best Actor - Drama Man Who Wasn’t There
Independent Spirit Award
1996 Best First Feature Sling Blade
1992 Best Screenplay One False Move
L.A. Film Critics Association
1998 Best Supporting Actor Simple Plan
National Board of Review
2001 Best Actor Bandits
2001 Best Actor Man Who Wasn’t There
2001 Best Actor Monster’s Ball
1996 Special Achievement Award Sling Blade
Screen Actors Guild
1998 Best Supporting Actor Simple Plan
1996 Best Actor Sling Blade
Toronto Film Critics Association
1998 Best Actor - Runner-up Simple Plan
Leave a comment