Billy Bob Thornton

Billy Bob Thornton’s latest screen credit sees him starring with Bruce Willis and Cate Blanchett in the hilarious comedy, Bandits. This Academy Award winning writer, actor and director has established an impressive career. He previously starred with Willis in Armageddon and he worked with Blanchett in Pushing Tin. He also wrote The Gift, in which Blanchett stars.

He wrote, acted and directed Sling Blade, for which he was honored with an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor and won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay. His other roles include: U-Turn, Primary Colors. He directed All The Pretty Horses. He will next be seen in The Man Who Wasn’t There, Monster’s Ball and Waking Up In Reno.

Do you have quite a bit in common with your Bandits character as far as little quirks and obsessions?

Yeah, I mean I think, it’s really germ phobia you know, that sort of thing, I’ ve got all that, yeah, and certain phobias that I mention in the movie are mine, the hair, that kind of stuff, antique furniture, that kind of stuff is definitely a phobia of mine.

An antique furniture phobia?

Well, that comes from a specific incident actually (laughs). I was watching television once, a long time ago, and I can’t watch TV, and see like old creepy movies or stuff while I’m eating, I get creeped out by it. It makes me not want to eat anything, you know? And it’s like some people watch the Medical Channel and eat, and I don’t see how they do it. But, there’s something about old castles and big old velvet curtains and tables carved like Louis the Fourteenth kind of furniture in England and places like that, or France, where they had, like, a lot of that sort of musty looking stuff. I can’t deal with it, I don’t like mould, and I don’t know why, it’s not just because it’s old. If it were that, that’s a pretty simple explanation, but that’s not it, because there’s really old stuff I’m fine with.

“In Japan I’m fine, you know. They can show me something in Japan and say, this has been here for twenty five thousand years, and I’m fine, I can eat off the floor, you know, it’s fine. But there’s something about, maybe it’s a past life, I don’t know, but there’s something about that particular era in England and France. A friend of mine suggested that perhaps I was beaten to death with an antique chair in a former life (laughs) I don’t know.

Do you believe in reincarnation?

Yeah, oh yeah, definitely.

Have you had regression therapy?

I’ve been regressed, yeah. I was in Russia though, when I was regressed. But, I don’t mean I was in Russia being regressed (laughs).

What was that like?

It was pretty odd, you know, strange experience. It wasn’t particularly eventful, it’s not like a cool story I could tell, because it was just like, I know I was in Russia and I know there was a fairly poor person who had a job. I worked at a shoe place, I was like a cobbler, you know, that’s all I remember about it really, and that my wife, I had a wife, but she was not there and we couldn’t find each other.

In what era?

It seemed to be in like probably early 1800s maybe.

You don’t have a particular aversion to Russian furniture then?

Well, I don’t know anything about Russian furniture (laughs), I don’t know that I’ve ever seen any, so I wouldn’t know, you know.

The germ thing must be pretty inconvenient though?

Yeah, that can be inconvenient. I don’t even have any with me today and I’ ve been aware of it all day, but I used to carry some of that alcohol stuff that you rub in your hands, I usually have some of that with me.

Would you be scared to shake my hand?

(laughs) No, I’m not like that. You know what, I shake hands with people all the time, I just make sure when I get home I wash my hands, cause otherwise you get sick and stuff. I’m not this much of a germ freak getting dirty, it’s not like that. Mine is more about the really disgusting stuff, you know?

You’ve got kids; they can do pretty disgusting things.

They can, yeah. My kids are pretty good about it, but probably cause I’m on them about it all the time. But I mean, like, if somebody’s obviously got like a thing going on, you know (laughs), they’re like coughing in their hands and their eyes are all red, they got like junk around their nostrils or something, you know, like, ‘oh man, this person’s got like you know, typhoid fever’ (laughs) or something, you know, ‘I better not get over there’. I worry about that. Like I’m one of these people who has no business looking at the medical manual, the medical books. I have no business, because I’ll have something in there by sundown, you know. I felt I had appendicitis for like years and years, and many of my friends kept saying, you can’t have appendicitis, forever. Appendicitis is not a chronic thing, I go, I know that, but I’m telling ya, I’m either gonna have it, or something, you know, cause I always thought I had it. Everytime I’d get like a little pain anywhere, I felt I got appendicitis. I had a fear of appendicitis for years. But certain things I don’t have a fear of.

Given the germ fear, are you worried about the chemical warfare that may happen? Have you already gone out and bought a gas mask and suit?

No, I’m not an alarmist. If it’s that bad, if we start having chemical warfare, I leave it more up to fate. You know, mine is like everyday stuff. I’ll put it to you this way, when you’re flying, and they give you that demonstration, and say, your thing, the floatation device, and here’s the way you buckle your belt and, in the event of an emergency evacuation, I don’t even listen, I mean, if the plane crashes, you’re gonna die, you know what I mean? I mean, if you’re so lucky, you know, that the plane actually just kinda crash landed and it wasn’t blowing up kind of thing, I’d find my way out, you know what I mean? If it’s really bad, you’re not gonna be there. So it’s kind of like that. I figure if we have some kind of war like that, if I’m gonna get gassed or something, you know, it’s gonna happen. In most instances, you don’t worry about yourself, you worry about your kids and your mother and all those kind of people. So I tell them all to get gas masks (laughs), you know what I mean?

Barry Levinson said Angelina told him that doing this role is going to make you even more of a hypochondriac.

Yeah, she did, when she visited the set for the first time, she said, you know, you guys are gonna make him much worse now, thanks a lot (laughs). But she has a long standing joke with me about all my phobias and stuff and we’ve had a lot of fun with that actually. Because she was making Tomb Raider when I was making this and I was also making the Coen Brothers movie, The Man Who Wasn’t There, so I did two movies in the time it took her to do that one, cause hers was kind of like a long schedule. So at the end of the day it was very funny to hear us talk to each other you know. I would say, ‘what’d you do today honey?’ and she’d say, ‘well I jumped off a mountain and swum across a vine’, or whatever the hell she did and she’d say, ‘what’d you do’, I’ d say, ‘well I got two haircuts and smoked some cigarettes and had a you know, sneezing attack or whatever’. You know, it was just very funny stuff.

So did you pick up any of your character’s phobias?

I don’t think so. Mine are very specific. I’m sort of obsessive compulsive too. I have these very specific things I go through in my head everyday, that are long standing…

Is that like counting how many times you’ve walked in and out of a door type thing?

That’s elementary stuff to me, walking in and out of a door, that was junior league stuff, a long time ago, mine is far more complicated than that.

Aren’t they really time consuming?

Uh-huh. And energy consuming. I do most of mine in my head. Most of mine are like mathematical.

So it’s an odd/even thing?

Not even so much that. Mine are so specific, and so complex, it’s like, truly, it’s like someone trying to map out DNA or something, it’s really not (laughs) pleasant.

Did you put a lot of ad-libs in Bandits?

Some. I mean the script was great so you don’t need to ad-lib much, but every now and then I’d throw stuff in there. The disguises were mine, you know. So then as a result of these disguises, there’s some ad-libbed lines. For instance, I had this whole conversation with a woman in the back of the van on the way to the bank about Neil Young and when he sang and all that kind of stuff.

You know, the scene between me and Cate where we discover that we both had phobias, that scene, we ad-libbed a lot of that. But I rarely do a movie where I don’t ad-lib something. I guess probably the Coen Brothers movie is the only instance where I didn’t. I think I might’ve ad-libbed one or two lines in the movie, that’s it, because their stuff is written in a way that it all fits together. Even the dialogue is part of this puzzle of theirs, you know, so you kinda need to stick to it.

With all the sort of things written about you and Angelina, do you both read the magazines and laugh or does it bother you?

Well, I mean every now and then you see something by accident that’s hurtful – we don’t pay attention to the tabloids. I mean that stuff’s just crap anyway and ninety percent of what they say about us is either embellished or just not true. We usually laugh about it, we get a kick out of it, most of the time what we do is ignore it, but for the most part people are pretty good about us. I mean they write how weird we are, but we don’t care, I mean, people sort of like us together, so most of the stuff they write about us is how crazy we are about each other, how obsessed we are about the blood and things – all that stuff’s fine. I mean, who wouldn’t be okay with that? As long as they’re saying positive stuff, it’s okay.

Every now and then, they’ll say something negative, and it’ll hurt your feelings. I mean, we’re human beings too but they tend to pick out… they can do an interview with us, and if ninety percent of it is really normal, they’ll take the ten percent and make the whole article about that, you know, so it’s really kind of annoying, but for the most part, people are pretty good about us, and they kind of get a kick out us.

Do you regard yourselves as weird?

No. We’re pretty normal. Way more normal than people would like to think, probably. I’ll tell you what’s weird about us, is that we’re normal, you know what I mean? (laughs)

It’s like, I think that it’s probably weird to people that we’re so crazy about each other, that we have what we do have and that we do the things we do, maybe that’s weird to people. To us it’ s normal and she’s actually really a decent human being and so the times I get upset are if they say something bad about her, and the only time she gets upset is when they say something bad about me. But for the most part, they say really good stuff about us, apart from all that mess about how we’ve got a dungeon, and whatever, we’re vampires and all this stuff, it’ s just stupid, it’s not true, and you know, I don’t only eat orange food…

Where did that one come from? We’re you seen eating a carrot somewhere?

Probably. It’s always something like that, and I mean, you can say something, and they’ll take part of the sentence, or they’ll take, one thing you said jokingly. I mean I’ve been misquoted, had things taken out of context, embellished, all kinds of things over the years, and so has she. Probably in the beginning, both separately and together, you know, we probably played up the sort of hipness factor and that’ s what people like, and you know, you’re coming up in your career and you don’ t want to be known as a dork, so you know, the part of you that’s cool, like, yeah sure, I’ll play that up, you know?

And these days, we’re kind of over that really. I mean we have a pretty decent life and, uh, I don’t think people talk about the normal part of our life enough, and certainly these days we do, we talk about it, so people can see who we really are.

One thing that is unusual is that you are really happy together yet you’re in Hollywood with all the temptations. So what do you think keeps your relationship so strong?

We don’t really participate, you know, we’re not much a part of Hollywood, really. I mean we have such a world to ourselves, you know, we have the kids part of the time and we got a couple of dogs and a house and my recording studio’s right there. And so we have quite a sanctuary, and we’re able to stay out of it, and we don’t go to parties and stuff and hang out with people, we just don’t it. The things that we choose to do, in terms of our movies, we try to have integrity in those choices, and then not do things for other reasons, you know, that kind of stuff. We’re working a lot on projects around the world right now, I mean she’s doing a lot and then I do some of it too, I’ve written some songs for the UN and we have a foundation together in Cambodia and then she’s working with a refugee foundation, so, yeah, we do a lot of other stuff.

Is she involved in your music at all?

She supports it, she loves it, she was in the studio with me last night, listening to a new mix on a song I was doing, she comes down every now and then to see what’s going on, and I wrote a couple of songs on my new record for her.

She doesn’t play the triangle or anything?

(laughs) No. But I think when we go out on the road, she said that she wants to play the triangle, she told me that one time. That’s funny you mention triangle, cause that’s what she said.

Was it difficult for you to watch Angelina with Antonio Banderias in those intimate scenes in Original Sin?

No. I mean if you’ve ever done one of those, you know what the deal is. It’s so uncomfortable. I just did one with Halle Berry in The Monsters Ball, that makes that movie look like Captain Kangaroo, you know (laughs) and it’s, I mean cause Angelina’s scene was at least normal, you’ve seen scenes like that before in movies, like in Original Sin, those scenes have been seen many, many times. This one in Monsters Ball, there’s a scene that people don’t usually see.

What is the scene?

It’s just intense, it’s very intense. It’s not romantic and you know, prettily shot and all that kind of stuff. It’s just very raw and real, you know and they don’t usually show stuff like this…

So there’s no twinge of jealousy at all?

Well no, not when you know the people. I know him and I know his wife and I knew him before I knew her, it was like, I know these people and they are like very sweet people who are respectful. Plus, she and I are already, were really together then, you know what I mean, not that everybody knew, but uhm (laughs) and so, we’ve been close for a long time.

When you know those scenes and when you’ve been around, I know for the audience, they think ‘oh wow’, ’cos they’ve never done that, but when you do that, there’s thirty people in the room and they keep coming over and putting stuff on your face and that kind of thing. It’s ridiculous you know and it’s uncomfortable and you don’t particularly enjoy it. But Antonio’s our friend, and that makes it easier, it’s like they get it. But then people want to blow it up in the press and everybody’s weird about it or jealous or whatever, and it’s just not true.

Does your germ problem ever come up when you have those kind of scenes?

(laughs) No, when I’m doing a movie, it’s so important to me to play the character that I’ll just defeat whatever’s going on usually.

So if the actors have a coughing fit in the middle of it, you’re okay?

I don’t know, I might (laughs) weird out a little bit over a coughing fit, maybe so, yeah. I’ve never been involved in a coughing fit, yet in one of those scenes.

In Bandits, you have many different disguises and styles – which is your favourite?

Oh the different disguises. I think I like the one where I’m Neil Young, it’ s like the black hair with the big sideburns, that’s my favorite one (laughs).

Are you a fan?

A fan of Neil, oh yeah, absolutely. I think especially because the sideburns wouldn’t quite stay down and (laughs) were kind of like sticking out a little bit you know, all the time. Yeah, I liked that one quite a bit. I was playing a different star with each disguise. I was Neil Young and then I was, well, I had the blonde hair and the suit, I was the guy in Cheap Trick, and then Rod Stewart.

And who was the golfer?

The golfer was just a tragic fashion mistake.

What can you tell us about directing?

I’m probably not going to direct again, for at least a year. Yeah. It’s not fun directing. Because, it’s fun when you’re shooting the movie, but it’s not fun afterwards, when you have to deal with the studio cutting it and putting posters out that look like Titanic (referring to All The Pretty Horses) and all that, that part’s not fun. The next time I direct something, it’s not going to cost fifty million dollars, it’s going to be a small movie because I want to keep control of it. It’s just too hard to have your heart broken, so I don’t want to do that.

What do you think is the funniest sort of misconception about you, or the weirdest rumor you’ve read about yourself?

Well there’s all kinds, the orange food thing was kind of odd and the fact that we have a dungeon in our house or some kind of thing, you know, we don’t have a dungeon (laughs) .

Angelina said recently, in Vancouver that she wears this Red Riding Hood outfit for you, and I was just wondering what you wear when she’s wearing the Red Riding Hood outfit?

Well I bought her the Red Riding Hood outfit. It was just a joke, I mean it was like Halloween or something, it was just, I got her the Red Riding Hood outfit. I don’t know, she just tried it on before, it’s not, see we joke a lot about stuff like that, you know – all that stuff is really not true, I mean, yeah, I bought her a Red Riding Hood outfit, but it was Halloween, you know?

Not for wearing in the dungeon?

No, it’s…

It’s a good one though, I mean the dungeon thing’s a funny one at least…

Yeah, yeah, I guess it’s funny, you know, to some people, I don’t know, it’s just, I don’t know what you’d do with a dungeon anyway. I mean, I’d be creeped out in a dungeon, you know, I don’t like old creepy stuff, you know?

Can you talk about The Man Who Wasn’t There?

Yeah, it’s one of those movies that I was able to watch and not realize that I was in it, which is great, you know. I think that the Coen brothers did such a great job on the film, because it’s so much a ’40s movie, that I watched it like I was watching Montgomery Clift, or Humphrey Bogart or somebody. It wasn’t even like it was me, you know. And when it was over, I felt, a sense of real completion and I knew that I’d been involved in something really good. I think it’s a fantastic movie, between this one and The Man Who Wasn’t There, and The Monsters Ball, I have three movies coming out before the end of the year that are all as good as they can be I think. I mean within their own category they are exactly what they set out to make, and I’m really, really feeling good about life. I’m a pretty happy guy.

Is your album released internationally?

Yes. It came out internationally on Monday actually. Came out, I know Europe and Japan and Australia anyways.

Are you touring for that internationally as well?

Yes, in spring, next spring.

How many songs were done by you?

Ten out of twelve were done by me and we covered two songs, and a song by the Byrds, a song by Hank Williams.

Are the people on the album the same people that will be touring with you?

Most of them, we’ll have six people in the band, uh, four including me, we’re getting two extras. It’s gonna be cool, I think, and the people are responding to the record very well. It’s number three on the playlist on Triple A radio right now. I mean, this is how I started out. I was a musician my whole life, I sort of accidentally got into acting (laughs).

The Man Who Wasn’t There is due for Irish release this month. The album Private Radio is available now on Lost Highway records