|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Billy Bob Thornton (born August 4, 1955) is an Academy Award-winning American screenwriter, actor and occasional director, playwright and singer. He came to fame in the mid 1990s, after writing, directing, and starring in the film Sling Blade, and has since established a career as a Hollywood leading actor, having appeared in several successful films, including 2003's Bad Santa. Thornton has been described in media reports as "Hollywood's go-to alpha male". Billy Bob Thornton became a Hollywood player with "Sling Blade" (1996), on which he did triple duty as star, screenwriter and director. The project had its genesis in a monologue the actor created on the set of his first TV-movie, "The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains" (HBO, 1987) to channel his anger. Thornton created Karl Childers, a mentally-challenged murderer, and nurtured the character for close to a decade, first performing the soliloquies on stage and then in the 1994 short "Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade", directed by George Hickenlooper. By the time he expanded the story to feature length, Thornton had made a deal to direct as well as write and star. The result was a languid Southern Gothic story that earned critical praise. Thornton was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, the son of Virginia Roberta (née Faulkner), a psychic, and Billy Ray Thornton, a high school history teacher and basketball coach. Thornton has three younger brothers, Jimmy Don, born in 1958 and now deceased, Jim Bean, and John David, born in 1969. Thornton lived in both Alpine, Arkansas and Malvern, Arkansas during his childhood, and also spent time with his grandfather, Otis Thornton, a forest ranger, in a small shack in the woods. Thornton is the cousin of noted professional wrestlers Dory Funk, Jr. and Terry Funk. Born and raised in a poor family, the Arkansas native hooked up with future writing partner Tom Epperson when both were children. Thornton began acting while in high school eventually deciding to pursue a full-time performing career. He and Epperson briefly landed in NYC before heading westward to Hollywood. Settling in L.A. in the late 1970s, Thornton worked variously as a rock singer, drummer and actor. He and Epperson wrote scripts which they attempted to sell, although they met with little success initially. After almost ten years in California, the tall, imposing actor made his feature debut in the forgettable direct-to-video release "Hunter's Blood" (filmed in 1986; released in 1988). After a brief turn as a soldier in the Bette Midler vehicle "For the Boys" (1991), Thornton won acclaim for his featured role in Carl Franklin's "One False Move" (1992), which he co-wrote with Epperson. His portrayal of a sociopathic ex-con involved with a black woman (Cynda Williams, who was briefly Thornton's third wife) earned him critical praise. Subsequent 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). Thornton was raised Methodist. A good high school baseball player, he tried out for the Kansas City Royals, but was let go after an injury. After a short period laying asphalt for the Arkansas State Transportation Dept., he attended Henderson State University in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, where he studied psychology but dropped out after two semesters. In the late 1980s, Thornton settled in Los Angeles to pursue his career as an actor alongside future writing partner Tom Epperson. Thornton initially had a difficult time succeeding as an actor, and worked in telemarketing, off-shore wind farming and fast food management while auditioning for acting jobs. He also played drums and sang with South African rock legend Piet Botha's band Jack Hammer. While Thornton worked as a waiter for an industry event, he served film director Billy Wilder and struck up a conversation with Wilder, who advised Thornton to consider a career as a screenwriter. Thornton first came to semi-prominence as a cast member on the CBS sitcom Hearts Afire with John Ritter and Markie Post. His role as the villain in 1992's One False Move, which he also cowrote, brought him to the attention of critics. He also had small roles in the early 1990s films Indecent Proposal, On Deadly Ground, Bound By Honor, Grey Knight, and Tombstone. Thornton put Wilder's advice to good use, and went on to write, direct and star in the independent film Sling Blade, which was released in 1996. The film, an expansion of a short film titled Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade, told the story of Karl Childers, a mentally handicapped man. Sling Blade garnered international acclaim. Thornton's screenplay earned him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, a Writers Guild of America Award, and an Edgar Award, while his performance received Oscar and Screen Actors Guild nominations for Best Actor. In 1998, he portrayed the James-Carville-like Richard Jemmons in Primary Colors. Thornton adapted the book All the Pretty Horses into a 2000 film with the same name, starring Matt Damon and Penélope Cruz. The negative experience (he was forced to cut more than an hour) led to his decision to never direct another film (a subsequent release, Daddy and Them, was filmed earlier). Also in 2000, an early script which he and Tom Epperson wrote together was made into The Gift which starred Cate Blanchett, Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes and Giovanni Ribisi. During the late 1990s, Thornton, who has had a life-long love for music, began a career as a singer-songwriter. He released a roots rock album entitled Private Radio in 2001, and two more albums, The Edge of the World (2003) and Hobo (2005). Thornton was the singer of a blues rock band named Tres Hombres. Guitarist Billy Gibbons referred to the band as "The best little cover band in Texas", and Thornton bears a tattoo with the band's name on it. He also performed the Warren Zevon song The Wind on the tribute album Enjoy Every Sandwich: Songs of Warren Zevon. Thornton also recorded a cover of the Johnny Cash classic "Ring of Fire" for the Oxford American magazine's Southern Music CD in 2001. As of September 2006, Thornton is working on another album. Epperson and Thornton's second produced script, "A Family Thing" (1996) garnered attention for its novel story: a white man discovers he has a black half-brother. Actor Robert Duvall brought the germ of the idea to the duo and they in turn fashioned a vehicle for the Oscar-winning actor. The scenario attracted the attention of James Earl Jones who played Duvall's half-brother and offered a star-making role for Irma P Hall as the men's elderly aunt. While the film won reviewers' attention, it set no box-office records. Nevertheless, Thornton's stock in Hollywood was on the rise and later that year, he made his solo screenwriting and directorial debut with "Sling Blade". Appearing onscreen with close-cropped hair, clean-shaven and using slow, raspy vocals punctuated with growls, the actor was barely recognizable as Karl. Although the film alternated between static set pieces (betraying its stage origins) and leisurely-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 especially Dwight Yoakam as the mother's bigoted, abusive boyfriend. Thornton won an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay and earned another nomination as Best Actor. Thornton's career which had gradually been gaining steam exploded with the success of "Sling Blade". He signed a three-picture deal with Miramax and was suddenly one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood; he was nearly unrecognizable as a psychotic mechanic in Oliver Stone's "U-Turn" before playing a reluctant 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 political advisor (patterned after real-life spin doctor James Carville) in "Primary Colors" and the Mission Control leader in the summer blockbuster "Armageddon", in addition to playing Bill Paxton's half-wit brother in "A Simple Plan". For the latter, in which he significantly altered his appearance, he earned a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination. Thornton returned to the director's chair to helm "All the Pretty Horses" (2000), which he also adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel. On the small screen, Thornton played a character named (appropriately enough) Billy Bob in the busted pilot "Circus" (ABC, 1987) before making his series debut as an ex-greaser who was a surrogate brother to a gang in "The Outsiders" (Fox, 1989). He later carved a niche 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-addict who stumbles onto drug money with near fatal results. Thorton's most critically acclaimed role since "Sling Blade" (1996) came when he starred opposite Halle Barry in "Monster's Ball" (2001). Thorton played a hardened jail warden whose life is emerged in his own bitter history and ingrained racism. His character transforms and ends up falling in love with the black woman whose husband he executed. His exquisite portrait of an agonized man trying to embrace love for the first time in years earned him an impressive array of critical plaudits and awards nominations. However, Thornton may have been his own worst enemy when it came to competing for Oscar gold, as he also turned in particularly fine performances in two other films that same year with a comedic turn in Barry Levinson's "Bandits" and sharp, haunting role as the barber drawn into a dark melodrama in the Coen Brothers' loopy noir "The Man Who Wasn't There." Oscar-watchers suggested that Thornton split his own vote among the three roles, resulting in no nominations for the actor. Thornton's always-reliable acting was also often overshadowed by his bizarre, 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." Their surprise union was characterized by dramatic, obsessive affectations including acquiring tattoos of each other's names and wearing vials of each other's blood when separated. However, the marriage lasted only two years: Jolie filed for divorce in 2002, shortly after adopting a Cambodian orphan who took Thornton's name. On screen in 2002, the actor appeared a pair of low-profile duds, as a philanderer in the offbeat 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). But Thornton was in fine, appropriately over-the-top form when he reunited with the Coen Brothers' screwball effort "Intolerable Cruelty" (2003), playing a Texas billionaire who's about to become the latest victim of a gold-digging serial divorcee (Catherine Zeta-Jones); and the actor had a pleasing low-key cameo as a libidinous U.S. president in the witty British romantic comedy "Love, Actually" (2003). Thornton's screen persona has been described by the press as that of a "tattooed, hirsute man's man". He appeared in several major film roles following Sling Blade 's success, including 1998's Armageddon and A Simple Plan, 2001's Monster's Ball and 2004's The Alamo, in which he played Davy Crockett. He played a malicious mall Santa Claus in 2003's Bad Santa, a black comedy that performed well at the box office and established Thornton as a leading comic actor. Thornton has stated that following Bad Santa's success, audiences "like to watch [him] play that kind of guy" and "they [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". He appeared in the comic film School for Scoundrels, which was released on September 29, 2006. In the film, he plays a self-help doctor; the role was written specifically for Thornton. His most recent film roles were The Astronaut Farmer, a drama released on February 23, 2007, and the comedy, Mr. Woodcock, in which Thornton plays a sadistic gym teacher. He will next star in the drama Peace Like a River. Thornton has also expressed an interest in directing another film, possibly a period piece about cave explorer Floyd Collins,[ based on the book Trapped! The Story of Floyd Collins by Robert K. Murray and Roger Brucker. Thornton received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on October 7, 2004. Thornton returned to center stage in peak form in director Terry Zwigoff's deliriously cynical holiday comedy "Bad Santa" (2003)—based on a one-line concept by the Coens—as whiskey-slugging, womanizing safecracker Willie T. Stokes (Thornton) who annually arises from a hazy hibernation to team up with three-foot-tall mastermind Marcus (Tony Cox) and, under the benevolent cover of Santa and Elf, clean out the particular department store in which they happen to be employed. Thornton's performance was a comedic masterstroke, especially when he lets loose with his stinging, profane and sarcastic invective. He followed up with a measured, intelligent portrayal of high school football coach in the gridiron-obsessed small town of Odessa, Texas, in the hit film "Friday Night Lights" (2004), and then took on a less serious sports minded 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 sensation who once earned a Major League tryout in his youth, Thornton was well-suited to the role of the inebriated, washed-up Buttermaker riding herd over a profane team of young misfits, but the film suffered in its adherence to the original and a refusal to sharper the story's edges for a more contemporary audience. Thornton took on his second anti-Christmas-themed film with "The Ice Harvest" (2005), director Harold Ramis' film noir with pitch black comic undercurrents, playing the potentially untrustworthy partner in crime of a mob accountant (John Cusack) who steals a bundle from his boss and endures a perilous Christmas Eve as they prepare to flee. For his next feature, Thornton wasted his talents as a lifestyle coach for losers in “School for Scoundrels” (2006), a lame and rather predictable comedy from Todd Phillips (“Old School”) about a top secret confidence building class run by a deviant huckster (Thornton) whose tough love tactics and compulsion for prying into his student’s lives leads them to overcome their deep-rooted anxieties to exact revenge. Thornton's roster for 2007 includes “The Astronaut Farmer”, a satirical look at an astronaut forced to leave NASA to save his family’s farm and “Mr. Woodcock”, featuring Thornton as a sadistic gym teacher who terrorizes a best selling self-help author (Seann William Scott) in his youth and is now ready to marry the writer’s widowed mother (Susan Sarandon). Thornton has repeatedly stated that he has obsessive-compulsive disorder. He and rock singer Warren Zevon became close friends after sharing their common experiences with the disorder. He is known for various idiosyncratic behaviors, well-documented in interviews with the actor. Among these is a phobia of antique furniture, something shared by the Dwight Yoakam character in the Thornton-penned Sling Blade. That trait was also added to Thornton's character in the 2001 film Bandits. Additionally, he has stated that he has a fear of certain types of silverware, a trait which was included for his character in 2001's Monster's Ball, in which his character requests a plastic spoon each time he consumes his daily bowl of chocolate ice cream. Thornton lives in Los Angeles. He has been married five times, most notably to actress Angelina Jolie. The pair were known for their eccentric behavior, including reports that they wore vials of each others' blood around their necks; he later clarified this to be that the two of them wore small lockets that contained a drop of blood from each of them inside. Thornton and Jolie adopted a child from Cambodia renamed Maddox. Jolie's divorce petition named the child as being both hers and Thornton's offspring and requested the Court grant her custody and Thornton reasonable parenting time. He is the father of four other children: Amanda Spence with his first wife, Melissa Gatlin; William Langston and Harry James with his fourth wife, Pietra Cherniak; and Bella, with Connie Angland, who is Thornton's current girlfriend. Thornton has also stated that he will likely not marry again; he has specified that he believes that marriage "doesn't work" for him. |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Celebrities Guide 
| WhoABC
Home : Disclaimer
: Terms
: Privacy
Policy : Contact
Us : Links All original content Copyright Celebrities Guide, WhoABC.com © 2004 - 2008. All Rights Reserved |