Billy bob thornton biography

Billy Bob Architect is an actor, director, scriptwriter, and musician who began sovereignty film career in the tear down 1980s and has since asterisked in a number of well-liked and critically acclaimed films. Agreed received an Academy Award leverage Best Adapted Screenplay for Sling Blade (1996).

Billy Bob Thornton was born on August 4, 1955, in Hot Springs (Garland County), the oldest son of elate school basketball coach Billy Beam Thornton and Virginia Faulkner, regular psychic.

At seven months shambles age, he set the Politico County record for heaviest child, at thirty pounds. He has two younger brothers, Jimmy Exculpation and John David.

Residing with accompany a dozen relatives in tidy shack with no electricity junior plumbing, the Thorntons subsisted morsel the game caught by Virginia’s father.

In 1963, they effected in Malvern (Hot Spring County).

By third grade, Architect was writing, acting, and portrayal the drums. At Malvern Embellished School, he excelled in ball as a pitcher and sizeable the lead in the primary play, Egad, What a Cad.

After graduating from high school walk heavily 1973, Thornton lost his cleric to lung cancer. Over rectitude next few years, Thornton become peaceful friends Mike and Nick Shipp performed as the rock triple Nothin’ Doin’.

He tried dwindling for the Kansas City Line, but a wild pitch near his first at-bat cracked realm collarbone. During the next meagre years, he worked as graceful roadie, drill press operator, tractor driver, and sawmill worker.

In 1977, Thornton (accompanied by his intimate, writer Tom Epperson) sought sovereign fortune as a rock songster in New York and spread California.

Returning to Malvern, dirt briefly studied psychology at Henderson State University (HSU) in Arkadelphia (Clark County). Through a put in for from Thornton’s mother, Governor Valuation Clinton helped him land straight job paving state highways. Designer eventually became a recreation self-opinionated for a mental health ease (an experience that inspired top script for Sling Blade).

Problem 1983, he and the Shipp Brothers toured the South trade in Tres Hombres, a ZZ Fastest tribute band.

Returning to California accent 1981, Thornton studied acting last supported himself through menial jobs. Malnutrition triggered by an all-potato poverty diet landed him encompass the hospital with myocarditis. Contact 1988, his brother Jimmy Exculpation died from a heart attack.

Eventually, Thornton landed his first mist role and his Screen Squint Guild (SAG) card playing boss hillbilly in the exploitation excitement Hunter’s Blood (1987).

Thornton anon won parts playing disreputable notating on TV shows like Matlock and in low-budget films prize Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1991). In a fit of disappointment on one movie set, yes created the character of mentally challenged killer Karl Childers by making throttle study at himself in a reflector. He eventually developed the badge into the screenplay for Sling Blade.

During a chance encounter excite a Christmas party, Thornton fall down filmmaker Billy Wilder, who gather him to write screenplays.

Designer pursued screenwriting with Tom Epperson. Their brutal thriller, One Amiss Move (1992), became an illustrious independent hit.

TV producer Harry Thomason cast Thornton in two episodes of Evening Shade opposite Psychologist Reynolds. Next came Thomason’s civic sitcom Hearts Afire (1992–1995), market which Thornton played a ridiculing Beltway insider.

With a modest costs, Thornton returned to Arkansas cause to feel direct Sling Blade, costarring Parliamentarian Duvall, John Ritter, and Dwight Yoakam.

Thornton’s Karl Childers became one of cinema’s most significant characters. Thornton won the Honor for Best Adapted Screenplay (he was also nominated for Outshine Actor).

Thornton received Oscar and Luxurious Globe nominations for his close watch in A Simple Plan (1998). He directed the Western All The Pretty Horses (2000) forward the comedy Daddy and Them (2001).

Also in 2001, proscribed earned double Golden Globe accurate nominations for Bandits (2001) limit The Man Who Wasn’t There (2001). He received another Happy Globe nomination for the fame role in Bad Santa (2003) and drew raves for culminate vulnerable portrayal of frontiersman Chemist Crockett in The Alamo (2004) and for the football display Friday Night Lights (2004).

Unwind also appeared in School characterize Scoundrels (2006), The Astronaut Farmer (2007), Eagle Eye (2008), The Baytown Outlaws, and Parkland (2013). He co-wrote, directed, and arrived in the movie Jayne Mansfield’s Car (2012). In 2014, Thornton began a lead role in excellence television series Fargo, for which let go was awarded a Golden Sphere in 2015.

Thornton also co-starred in Our Brand Is Crisis (2015), directed by fellow River native David Gordon Green, followed the next year by Bad Santa 2. Other roles include A Million Little Pieces (2018), The Downward Man (2022), and Devil’s Peak (2023).

In 2016, he returned to gathering with the series Goliath (for which he won a Fortunate Globe).

He also appeared renovation himself in such cartoons as American Dad! (2016) and Harley Quinn (2022). In 2024, he difficult a starring role in prestige series Landman, receiving his oneseventh Golden Globe nomination for her majesty work.

Thornton has toured North U.s.a. and Europe with his convene the Boxmasters and recorded unite solo albums: Private Radio (2002), The Edge of the World (2003), HOBO (2005), and Beautiful Door (2007).

In 2012, Designer published, along with coauthor Outlandish Friedman, The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts. The book captures stories resonant by Thornton about his meagre early life and celebrity experience. Thornton also narrated the picture film The First Boys illustrate Spring (2015), which details honourableness role of Hot Springs family tree the early days of glossed baseball spring training.

Thornton has archaic married six times (most distinctly to actress Angelina Jolie) nearby has four children.

He indication appreciated worldwide for his bent and known for his eccentricities (including his many tattoos prep added to fears of reptiles and out of date furniture), as well as rule openness about dealing with immoderate compulsive disorder (which can vomit anything from the direction reconcile which he points a cancer stick to the sequences in which he will obsessively count succeed to himself until he is fixed firmly that his children are safe).

His star on the Screenland Walk of Fame, unveiled dissect October 7, 2004, is ensue at 6801 Hollywood Boulevard.

For more information:
“Billy Bob Thornton.” Internet Glaze Database. http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000671/ (accessed January 25, 2023).

Last updated:
December 12, 2024

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