Billy Bob Thorton: Strange Doings, Gossip and Trivia

By Gary Geyer

Most people think Billy Bob Thornton is a raging nutcase. And he hasn’t exactly done a lot to change their minds.

Articles about Billy Bob always seem to list the wacky stuff right away: his odd eating habits, including a bout with anorexia; a diet made up entirely of orange food , use of blood as a fashion accessory, tattoos, five marriages…Need I go on?

Okay, I’ll go on.

Billy Bob claims to have an obsessive compulsive disorder. He is famous for his idiosyncratic behavior in interviews. He says has a phobia for antique furniture and certain types of silverware. (In Monster’s Ball, Billy Bob’s character asks for a plastic spoon whenever he eats his daily bowl of chocolate ice cream.)

The fattest baby in Hot Springs

Billy Bob was born in Hot Springs Arkansas. “I was the fattest baby in Clark County, Arkansas. They put me in the newspaper. It was like a prize turnip,” he said.

His father was a high school history teacher and his mother was a psychic. Billy Bob spent some time with his grandfather as well (a forest ranger), living in a shack in the woods. He studied psychology at Henderson State University in Arkadelphia Arkansas but dropped out after two semesters.

Have you thought about screenwriting?

He moved to Los Angeles in the late eighties. In the process of trying to succeeded as an actor, Billy Bob worked in telemarketing, fast food management and off-shore wind farming. Once, while working as a waiter at a Hollywood party, he got into a conversation with the director Billy Wilder (Some Like it Hot, Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, to name a few). Billy suggested to Billy Bob to consider screenwriting as a career.

Sitcoms and bit parts

Billy Bob spent some time working in TV sitcoms and had small rolls in the nineties in some Hollywood movies (Indecent Proposal, Tombstone)

He took Billy Wilder’s advice and wrote a screenplay that was made into an independent film. It was called “Slingblade” and he directed and starred in it.

The screenplay won Billy Bob an Academy award and got him a nomination for best actor as well.

A “tattooed man’s man”

Billy Bob has been described as a “tattooed man’s man”. He played a malicious mall Santa Claus in “Bad Santa”, and that established him as a pretty good comic actor.

Billy Bob was quoted as saying, audiences “like to watch me play that kind of guy. Casting directors call me up when they need an asshole. It’s kinda that simple… you know how narrow the imagination in this business can be.”

Billy Bob received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2004

What you have been waiting for, Angelina gossip

Billy Bob has been married five times, his most famous wife being Angelina Jolie. He and Angelina reportedly wore vials of each others’ blood around their necks.

Billy Bob said, in an interview with Esquire magazine, that having sex with Angelina Jolie is not such a big deal and he doesn’t understand why Jolie was voted last year the world’s sexiest woman.

“Sleeping with Angelina Jolie is like F—ing the couch. Sex doesn’t have to be with a model to be good.”

They were divorced in 2002, after 3 years of marriage.

Marriage and kids

Billy is the father of four children: one with his first wife, two with his fourth wife and one with his current girlfriend. He says now that he won’t marry again because marriage doesn’t seem to work for him. He said, “I’ve been married five times, and people think that’s some bizarre thing, yet I’ve got buddies who refuse to get married and have sex with 15 people a week. I’m like, ‘Which is better?’ At least I was trying.” <<

Billy Bob quotes from the Billy Bob official website

http://www.billybobthornton.net/

“People think the hard thing for an actor is crying and screaming, but that’s easy. What’s hard is a character who never tips his hand, who toes the line all the time. The hard stuff is never telling yourself, “Hey, I better do something here.”"

On quitting drinking.

“It’s the greatest thing in the world. It makes you proud of yourself”

On love and romance

“I believe in running through the rain and crashing into the person you love and having your lips bleed on each other.”

On the Independent Film industry

“There’s a certain kind of snobbery in the independent world. It’s like, ‘I’m a cutting-edge guy, I wear a beret, I hang out in coffee shops, and I don’t like anything that is not some crappy little movie where all the girls wear pointy glasses and all the guys are grapefruit salesmen and the movie has no point.”

On his aversion to antiques

“And what are those things, harpsichords? I can’t even be on the same block with a harpsichord. I’m tellin’ ya, that freaks me out.”

On Star Trek

“I love watching Star Trek. I just don’t want to be in it. I don’t want to wear any costume like that. I have no desire to say things about thrusters. ‘Captain, the thrusters are jammed!’ I just don’t want to say that.”

On talent (or lack of)

“I don’t consider what I have to be talent. I think I have a very rich life experience, so I don’t have to invent anything, which makes it easier for me, I think. I live a pretty strange life. All I have to do is just sit down and start writing stuff down that I know already…I’m just copying stuff out of my heart, my soul and my brain.”

On bad things

“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.”

On his propensity for chatting up his fans at great length

“It’s like, my stalkers want space from me.”

On karaoke

“I’d rather be beaten over the head with a 2 by 4 than sing karaoke.”

On his Southern heritage

“The place is rich in folklore. And there’s a real strong sort of spiritual background down there that lends itself to telling ghost stories, stories of the past, family stories. The air is thick there, and everything’s still there–like the Civil War is still there.”

On “shaking his booty’

“I’ve danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.”

On surprise birthday parties

“My worst nightmare.”

On air travel

“I don’t have a fear of flying; I have a fear of crashing.”

On being in the audience

“I can’t sit through plays and musical theatre. I just want to run up onstage and mess up their hair and turn over the furniture.”

17 trivia facts about Billy Bob

1. He is an expert trick shot artist with a pool cue

2. He managed a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor in Culver City, California

3. During his brief stint in college, he majored in psychology.

4. He owns a mynah bird named Alice.

5. He is an accomplished mimic.

6. His favorite childhood snack was a solid cube of butter.

7. His favorite movie of all time is HIGH NOON.

8. “Kindly hold, Mmm-hmm.” Among his many brief jobs, he has been a receptionist for an answering service, a ball-point pen salesman, has hauled hay, and managed to survive a stint in a saw mill with all ten fingers intact.

9. During his rock ‘n’ roll days in the 1970s, he grew his hair down past his waist.

10. He is a devoted St. Louis Cardinals fan. In 2003, he got to throw out the first pitch of the season .

11. For Halloween a few years ago, he dressed up as diet guru Susan Powter, right down to the spiky blonde hair.

12. He is allergic to wheat, dairy, and eggs. He’s also allergic to cats, but he doesn’t eat them.

13. Actress Penelope Cruz named her cat “Billy Bob” after him.

14. He is one quarter Choctaw Indian from his mother’s side of the family. The other quarter is Italian, and the rest (the Thornton side) is Irish.

15. His favorite book is A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole, an author who so despaired that his novel would never be published that he killed himself. (Toole’s mother had the book published posthumously, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction.)

16. He would love to learn to tap dance.

17. He loves U.S. history and enjoys talking politics. <<