B
ack in August, Billy Bob Thornton turned 70. It’s easy to imagine him celebrating a landmark birthday with some sort of blowout party during a more chaotic period of his life about two decades back. But this was a quiet affair with his children and wife, Connie Angland.
“Connie asked me what I wanted and I said, ‘Nothing, absolutely nothing. As a matter of fact, don’t mention it to anybody,’” Thornton tells Rolling Stone. “We really just hung out here at the house, just me and Connie and the kids, and had a nice time, and they got me a vegan cake, which — I can’t eat wheat or dairy, so that was awesome. Anytime a guy like me could have cake, it’s a great day.”
This is a good time in time in Thornton’s life. He’s finally in a long, stable marriage after five prior attempts, and his show Landman is a giant hit for Paramount+. (The second season kicked off over the weekend.) We spoke to Thornton about the series, the odd trajectory of his career over the past few decades, his other life as a musician, his greatest vice, what the public got wrong about him and Angelina Jolie, and why he never says no to a selfie.
In Landman, you play Tommy Norris, a deeply stressed-out dealmaker for an oil company. Do you relate to him in any way?
I’ve spent periods in my life where I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, so I think that’s probably a thing I relate to the most. Our work ethic is pretty close. Plus I grew up down in Arkansas and Texas, so I know those [oil] guys and grew up around it.
Probably the biggest difference in me and Tommy and in real life is that the way I dress is the polar opposite. The only cowboy hat I wrote prior to this was a rock & roll cowboy hat bent in front and the back with a bandana underneath it. And I’d never worn a white snap button Western shirt until this.
In two key scenes in the first season, Tommy negotiates with drug dealers while tied to a chair with a burlap sack over his head. How do you think you’d handle that situation in real life?
Well, I’ll tell you what, I’ve been closer to that in my real life than I have been running an oil company, for sure. I’ve probably felt more at home there with the bag on my head with a bunch of drug dealers than going out there and talking about pump jacks.
Taylor Sheridan seems to have a real intuitive sense of what it takes to make a hit TV show. What does he understand about the medium?
Well, I think he knows that there are people, particularly in the U.S., that are begging to see themselves onscreen. There’s a lot [of people] in today’s society who think there’s so many rules and laws, and that politics is crazy on every side. I think he’s found a way to appeal to people somewhere in the middle.
He also writes stories that make you want to see what’s going to happen next. People by nature want that. It’s why people watched soap operas in the Fifties and Sixties and Seventies. They want to know if Muffy’s going to marry Biff or whatever.
He took Kevin Costner, Harrison Ford, Sylvester Stallone, and you, and gave you such juicy characters to play at a time when movie studios are not making the types of movies that you guys used to make back in the day.
That’s very true. But also everybody’s found this streaming world, which is what people are into now. I was late to the party because when I was growing up TV was a bad word to movie actors. So I resisted forever. I was offered two or three series that became huge hits in the 2000s, and I turned them down. My manager kept telling me, “Dude, this is where it’s headed. You don’t understand.” I said, “Well, I know, but it’s TV.” He said, “It’s not. These are long-form movies and it’s where the future is.” The first [TV] thing I did was the first season of Fargo, and once I did Fargo, I said, “Oh, OK, I get it. I totally understand now.”
My mother used to see one movie a week in the theater. She goes maybe twice a year now.
You know what I go to see in the theater? I go see Moana and Inside Out with my daughter. That’s the only time I’ve been in the theater in the last two or three years, watching those movies that my daughter wants to go see.
If you were trying to get Sling Blade made now, do you think it would happen?
I don’t think I could get Sling Blade made now. I don’t think we would get Bad Santa made now. There’s a possibility we wouldn’t get Monster’s Ball made now. As a matter of fact, a lot of movies I’ve done, I don’t think you could get them made now. Sling Blade, even if it did get made now, it would be cast away to some cable channel in the middle of the night or something like that.
You got very famous in your forties as opposed to your twenties like a lot of actors. Do you think fame is easier to navigate when you’re a bit older and more experienced in life?
Oh, for sure. There’s no doubt about it. I kiss the ground every day and count my lucky stars that that didn’t happen, because in my twenties I’m a skinny little long-haired hippie doing, as Frank Zappa said, chemical refreshments, and no idea other than I live for today. There’s no telling what would’ve happened to me if I’d have become famous in my twenties. I probably wouldn’t be here, honestly.
After Sling Blade, which won you a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, you got so many opportunities all at once. Was that overwhelming?
Yeah. It all happened so quickly. But Robert Redford gave me some good advice. He said, “Now they’re going to offer you to write big movies about an alien who lands in Kansas or whatever it is.” And he said, “Just don’t do it. Stay right where you are in this independent film world. Make a name for yourself in that, and then go to the bigger movies.” He was absolutely right. And I’ll never forget that. He was right on the money.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?
I was working for a catering company and I met Billy Wilder. I was at this party with a bunch of rich people, passing out hors d’oeuvres, and he said, “So you want to be an actor?” And I said, “How did you know that?” Because I wasn’t clued into the fact that all the waiters in L.A. want to be actors. And he said, “Forget about it. You’re too ugly to be a leading man, and you’re too pretty to be a character actor.” And I said, “So what do I do?” He said, “Can you write?” I said, “Yeah, I actually do write. I write songs. I write short stories. I’ve written a couple of screenplays.” He goes, “They need writers. Actors are on every corner.” And that bit of advice from him added up to everything I did.
I read that you turned down villain roles in some pretty big movies. Why?
Years ago, some old character actor told me, “You don’t play the bad guy in a popcorn movie because that’s who you’ll be forever. Don’t try to kill Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks, America’s Sweethearts. Because the audience is going to remember you that way.” I always tell my agents, “I’m never going to try to kill Tom Cruise or Tom Hanks, ain’t going to happen.”
Two years after your indie Sling Blade, you were making Armageddon, a huge Hollywood movie with a monster budget. How strange was that?
It was pretty strange, I have to say. I’d never done anything like that. I don’t think I’ve ever told this story to a journalist before, but we were doing a table read of the script to Armageddon at the Four Seasons. And Jerry Bruckheimer, to his credit, decided to cast some character guys in the movie. I was sitting between Steve Buscemi and Owen Wilson and Will Patton. Buscemi looked over at me and he goes, “Hey, bud, what the hell are we doing here?” I said, “Yeah, I know.” But I mean, I got to say, that movie stood the test of time, and they still play it all the time.
Do you think the superhero movie boom will be like the Western boom in the mid-20th century and will peter out eventually?
I honestly don’t know the answer to that question. The movie business has always been a business, but I think more so now than ever. And whatever the people want, that’s what the studios are going to make. You can’t blame the studios. They’re an eating machine. They’re a corporation. They want to make money. Oil, pharmaceuticals, tech, movie business, that’s what they do. And so as long as people want that, they’ll deliver it. With big movies, you can make toys from them. I don’t know how many Tommy Norris toys we would sell from Landman, but you can sure sell toys if you’re doing Batman.
I mean, you always hope and pray that we’ll have that independent film boom that we had in the late Eighties through the mid Nineties. When I started out back there, me and Quentin Tarantino and James Gray and Nick Cassavetes and Ted Demme, we all knew each other. We were outsiders in an insider’s world, as my friend Dwight Yoakam puts it, and it was a popular time for that. I have hope that it’ll come back, but I don’t have a lot of confidence that it’ll come back.
You’ve been married six times. Did you ever have a point where you lost faith in the institution?Well, not now. Connie and I have been together 23 years and married for 12. Our daughter is 20. So, I found the right spot to be. The other times I got married were just like, you had a little too much to drink one night and somebody said, “We should get married.” You go, “Yeah, OK.” I always tell people, at least I was trying.
And of course, Angelina [Jolie] and I had a great time together. That was one of the greatest times of my life. She and I are still very, very close friends. And that was the one that ended up being a really civilized breakup. We simply split up because our lifestyles were so different.
That was a crazy time, with paparazzi following you two around. What did you learn from that experience of briefly being a tabloid fixture?
It was pretty weird. When we met, I was the more famous one. And then when we got together, for some reason, the people and the media are very interested in celebrity couples, that seems to be a very popular thing. So, it was weird. We couldn’t go anywhere. I mean, we did, and then of course we had times when we would say things that became sound bites or whatever.
People still talk about the vials of blood.
Which never existed. We each had a little locket, literally with a drop of blood in them. That’s a romantic little idea, and that’s all that was. But by the time it’s over, we’re vampires. We live in a dungeon, we drink each other’s blood, and this kind of stuff.
You’re also a musician with a rock band, the Boxmasters. Does it ever feel almost as if you’re two different people, with those two facets of your career?
Yes, absolutely. I grew up in the music world and was even a roadie for a lot of popular bands. I never dreamed I’d do anything else except being in the rock & roll business. I didn’t know anything about movies. The only movies we saw in my little town in Arkansas, we had one theater, and we saw whatever Disney put out. It would be The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes or The Ghost and Mr. Chicken with Don Knotts or a Dick Van Dyke movie. I didn’t know about movies until I moved to California.
Who’s closer to the real you: The guy shooting the movie or the guy playing music onstage?
The guy onstage with the band. It’s closer to who I am. [As an actor,] I really do have to become these characters. I can’t just walk out there and go, “OK, here we go.” It takes a lot of thought and work to [act].
What’s the music that moves you most as a listener?
The British invasions and the music of Memphis and the Southern California pop rock of the Sixties and Seventies. I mean, I’m always going to be the Who, the Beatles, and the Stones and the Kinks and the Animals.
What’s the best concert that you’ve ever been to as a fan?
A concert at Martin Coliseum in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1972. That’s where we went for big concerts. The opening act was Freddie King. The second act was Tony Joe White. And Creedence Clearwater Revival were the headliners. I was standing about 12 rows back on psychedelic refreshments. They hit the opening chord to “Green River” the second the lights came on the stage. It was so powerful to me in that moment.
What’s your biggest vice?
I drink Michelob Ultra because there’s 2.6 carbs, and you could drink a dozen of them. And I smoke American Spirits. I smoke like an old Buick. Those are the vices I have. I quit doing drugs when I was 24, never had it since. And gosh, maybe old television. I’ve spent way too much time watching old TV shows.
What are your favorite old shows?
I watch Andy Griffith a lot. Colombo too. I watch all those detective shows.
What are the best and worst parts of success?
The best part of success is being able to take care of my family and do something that I love in the process. There are a lot of ways you can take care of your family, but it involves a lot of work that’s not necessarily creative. And if I don’t create, I die. So being able to be creative and take care of my family in the process, that’s the most important thing.
The downside to it… There are a lot of things that people whine about. I can’t think of one. I mean, you could say privacy, but I like people. I really do. I have to be dragged away by my publicist or my wife or my daughter sometimes. I talked to a lady whose son’s in dental school for a half an hour on the sidewalk.
You’re cool with strangers asking for selfies?
Absolutely. You can ask anybody I tour with, anybody I make movies with, I’ll stand there all day. I really will. It doesn’t bother me at all. By the way, those are the people that put my kids through school. I feel blessed that they ask me. I really do.
