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Billy Bob Thornton Biography:

Billy Bob Thornton became a Hollywood star with "Sling Blade" (1996), on which he did triple duty as star, screenwriter and director. The project had its start in a script the actor created on the set of his first television movie, "The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains" (HBO, 1987) to channel his rage. Thornton fashioned Karl Childers, a mentally challenged murderer, and refined the character for close to 10 years, first performing the acts on stage and then in the 1994 short film "Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade", directed by George Hickenlooper. By the time he stretched the story to feature length, Thornton had made a agreement to direct as well as write and star. The effect was a relaxed Southern Gothic story that gained critical acclaim.

Born and raised in a poor family, the Arkansas resident hooked up with future writing collaborator Tom Epperson when both were children. Thornton began acting while in high school ultimately deciding to chase a full time performing profession. He and Epperson temporarily landed in NYC before heading west to Hollywood. Settling in L.A. in the late 1970s, Thornton worked off and on as a rock singer, drummer and actor. He and Epperson wrote scripts which they tried to sell, although they met with little success at the start. 

After almost ten years in California, the tall, daunting actor made his feature debut in the unremarkable direct to video release of "Hunter's Blood" (filmed in 1986; released in 1988). After a small role as a soldier in the Bette Midler vehicle "For the Boys" (1991), Thornton won praise for his featured role in Carl Franklin's "One False Move" (1992), which he co-wrote with Epperson. His interpretation of a ex-con involved with a black woman (Cynda Williams, who was momentarily Thornton's third wife) earned him top praise. succeeding feature appearances included supporting roles in Taylor Hackford's "Bound By Honor" (1993), Steven Seagal's directorial debut "On Deadly Ground" (1994) and Jim Jarmusch's "Dead Man" (1995) with Johnny Depp.

Epperson and Thornton's second produced script, "A Family Thing" (1996) gained awareness for its narrative story: a white man discovers he has a black half-brother. Actor Robert Duvall brought the idea to the pair and they in turn created a vehicle for the Oscar-winning actor. The scenario attracted the awareness of James Earl Jones who played Duvall's half-brother and offered a role for Irma P Hall as the men's aged aunt. While the film won media' attention, it set no box office records. However, Thornton's clout in Hollywood was on the rise and later that year, he made his solo screenwriting and directorial debut with "Sling Blade". 

Appearing onscreen clean shaven and using unhurried, raspy vocals accented with growls, the actor was scarcely recognizable as Karl. Although the film switched between stationary set pieces (betraying its stage origins) and easy-paced scenes, it did feature a strong cast including Lucas Black as a boy who befriends Karl, Natalie Canerday as his mother, John Ritter as a gay man for whom the boy's mother works and in particular, Dwight Yoakam as the mother's narrow-minded, obnoxious boyfriend. Thornton won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and earned another nomination as Best Actor.

Thornton's profession which had steadily been gaining steam exploded with the success of "Sling Blade". He signed a three picture deal with Miramax and was instantly one of the most wanted actors in Hollywood; he was nearly unrecognizable as a psychotic mechanic in Oliver Stone's "U-Turn" before playing a unenthusiastic religious convert in Duvall's "The Apostle", among his 1997 roles. 

The following year found him as a would-be marijuana kingpin in "Homegrown", a wily opinionated advisor (patterned after real-life spin doctor James Carville) in "Primary Colors" with John Travolta, and the Mission Control leader in the summer blockbuster "Armageddon" with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, in addition to playing Bill Paxton's brother in "A Simple Plan". 

On television, Thornton played a character named Billy Bob in the out of order pilot "Circus" (ABC, 1987) before making his series debut as a man who was a replacement brother to a gang in "The Outsiders" (Fox, 1989). He later did well portraying good ol' boys on such sitcoms as "Evening Shade" (CBS, 1990-93) and the John Ritter-Markie Post vehicle "Hearts Afire" (CBS, 1992-95), both executive produced by friend and fellow Arkansan Harry Thomason. With Epperson, Thornton wrote the HBO movie "Don't Look Back" (1996), directed by Geoff Murphy and starring Eric Stoltz as a musician and drug addict who stumbles onto drug money with near lethal results.

Thorton's most critically applauded role since "Sling Blade" (1996) came when he starred opposite Halle Barry in "Monster's Ball" with Heath Ledger (2001). Thornton played a toughened jail warden whose life is submersed in his own harsh history and deep-seated racism. His character changes and ends up falling in love with the black woman whose husband he executed. His superb portrayal of a suffering man trying to hold onto love for the first time in years earned him a remarkable range of critical praise and awards nominations. However, Thornton may have been his own worst adversary when it came to contending for Oscar gold, as he also turned in mostly fine performances in two other films that same year with a comedic turn in Barry Levinson's "Bandits" (2001) with Bruce Willis, and razor-sharp, memorable role as the barber drawn into a dark story in the Coen Brothers' silly flick "The Man Who Wasn't There" with Scarlett Johansson. Oscar-watchers suggested that Thornton split his own vote among the three roles, resulting in no nominations for the actor.

Thornton's consistent acting was also often overshadowed by his peculiar, high profile relationship with the much younger actress Angelina Jolie, who became his fifth wife in 2000 after the two met on the 1999 film "Pushing Tin" with Cate Blanchett. Their bombshell union was met by dramatic, fanatical affectation including tattoos of each other's names and wearing vials of each other's blood when not together. The marriage lasted only two years: Jolie filed for divorce in 2002, soon after adopting a Cambodian orphan who took Thornton's name. 

On screen in 2002, the actor appeared in a pair of low budget flops, as a philanderer in the wacky comedy "Waking Up in Reno" which also starred Charlize Theron, Patrick Swayze and Natasha Richardson; and as a parolee who becomes involved with the unknowing wife of the man he killed in "Levity" (2002) with Morgan Freeman, Holly Hunter and Kirsten Dunst. But Thornton was in good form when he joined with the Coen Brothers' oddball effort "Intolerable Cruelty" with George Clooney (2003), playing a Texas billionaire who's about to become the latest casualty of a gold digging divorcee (Catherine Zeta-Jones); and the actor had a enjoyable low key cameo as a sexual U.S. president in the clever British romantic comedy "Love, Actually" (2003).

Thornton returned to center stage in top form in director Terry Zwigoff's sarcastic holiday comedy "Bad Santa" (2003), based on a one line concept by the Coens, as booze slugging, womanizing safecracker Willie T. Stokes (Thornton) who once a year arises from a foggy slumber to team up with mastermind Marcus (Tony Cox) and, under the compassionate cover of Santa and Elf, clean out the particular department store in which they happen to be employed. Thornton's performance was a comedic masterpiece, especially when he cuts loose with his harsh, irreverent and cynical tirades.

Billy Bob followed up with a calculated, intellectual portrayal of high school football coach in the sports fixated small town of Odessa, Texas, in the hit film "Friday Night Lights" (2004), and then took on a less somber sports themed project when he accepted the role of Little League baseball coach Morris Buttermaker (originally played by Walter Matthau) in the 2005 remake of the classic kids' baseball film "The Bad News Bears." A high school baseball phenomenon who once earned a Major League tryout in his teenage years, Thornton was well-well-matched to the role of the drunk, down on his luck Buttermaker watching over a disrespectful team of young hoodlums, but the film suffered in its loyalty to the original with a dull storyline that failed to update the story for the current generation. 

Thornton took on his second anti Christmas inspired film with "The Ice Harvest" (2005), director Harold Ramis' film with blue comic undertones, playing the possibly dishonest partner in crime of a mob accountant (John Cusack) who robs a bundle from his boss and puts up with a terrifying Christmas Eve as they arrange to take flight.

For his next feature, Thornton underused his performance skills as a lifestyle coach for losers in “School for Scoundrels” with Ben Stiller (2006), a laid-back and rather conventional comedy from Todd Phillips (“Old School”) about a top secret confidence building class run by a con man (Thornton) whose harsh love devices, and tendency for interfering in his student’s lives, leads them to triumph over their deep seated anxiety to exact retribution. 

Thornton's schedule next included “The Astronaut Farmer”, a sardonic look at an astronaut required to leave NASA to save his family’s farm and “Mr. Woodcock” (2007), showing Thornton as a cruel gym teacher who terrorizes a best selling self help author (Seann William Scott) in his formative years, and is now ready to marry the writer’s widowed mother (Susan Sarandon).

The year 2008 had Billy Bob starting with the action thriller "Eagle Eye" (2008) starring Shia Labeouf, about young slacker and a single mom get tangled up in a terrorist cell plotting a political assassination. Next was the crime drama "The Informers" (2008) with Kim Basinger, a drama based on Bret Easton Ellis' novel set in 1983 Los Angeles, where movie executives, rock stars, a vampire, and other morally challenged character mix and commingle. In the works for 2009 is thriller "Duplicity" (2009) starring Julia Roberts, about a pair of corporate spies who share a steamy past hook up to pull off the ultimate con job on their respective bosses.

Billy Bob then starred with Halle Berry in the crime drama "Tulia" (2008), about a small town in Tulia, Texas, where an attorney (Halle Berry) works on behalf of a group of local black men who are wrongly convicted of their involvement in a drug ring. Finally is "Peace Like A River" (2009). Set in a small, rural Minnesota community in the early 1960's, an asthmatic 11-year-old Reuben Land observes exceptional events taking place in his family while under the care of his nurturing and otherworldly father.

• Born:
  on 08/04/1955 in Alpine, Arkansas
• Job Titles:
  Actor, Screenwriter, Director, Drummer, Singer, Songwriter, Cater waiter, Factory worker, Pizza maker

Family

• Brother: Jimmy Don Thornton. born c. 1958; died in 1988 of heart problems
• Brother: John David Thornton. born c. 1969; in medical school c. 1998
• Daughter: Amanda Thornton. mother, Melissa Lee Gatlin
• Daughter: Bella Thornton. born September 2004; mother, Connie Angland
• Father: Billy Ray Thornton. died of lung cancer c. 1973
• Mother: Virginia Thornton.
• Son: Harry Thornton. born c. 1994; mother, Pietra Thornton; named after producer Harry Thomason
• Son: Maddox Thornton. adopted at age seven-and-one-half months in 2002 with Angelina Jolie; Cambodian; no longer part of child's life
• Son: William Langston Thornton. born June 27, 1993; mother, Pietra Thornton; named for Thornton's great-great-great uncle

Significant Others

• Companion: Connie Angland. mother of Thornton's daughter Bella
• Companion: Danielle Dotzenrod. dating as of September 2002; engaged as of March 2003; no longer together as of March 2003
• Companion: Laura Dern. began dating in March 1997; announced plans to marry in 1999 but had separated before the end of the year

Education

• Henderson State University, Arkadelphia, Arkansas, psychology