The actor this week released his fourth solo album, “Beautiful Door,” and is supporting it with a 26-city, five-week national tour. This fall Thornton, 51, appears on screen opposite Susan Sarandon as the coach from hell in “Mr. Woodcock” and, following the concert tour, heads to Texas to work again with “Monster’s Ball” costar Halle Berry, this time in John Singleton’s civil-rights drama “Tulia.”
Thornton recently spoke with NEWSWEEK’s Steve Friess about his music, his ex-wife and his critics. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: On your podcast, you described how you discovered the Beatles. You have to be the first musician I’d ever heard who, when talking about the Beatles, said his inspiration was Ringo. Billy Bob Thornton: Well, you know, I was a little kid. When they came on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” I was 9. I just saw Ringo back there, the way he tossed his head, and the way he played on the high hat that kind of swing thing he did, I thought, “Wow.” There was just something about Ringo. Later on, when I started getting more into lyrics and things like that, then I was a Lennon freak. Initially, when you’re a kid, you gravitate to the guy who looks like he’s having the most fun.
Your new album has gotten some very good reviews. But one Las Vegas critic wrote, “Honestly, other than a huge sack of dead kittens, is there anything more sad than an actor trying to become a rock star?” I don’t even know what kind of sense that makes. If you take a guy who grew up playing music, just because he’s also famous as an actor, what difference is there in that? Critics should comment on things based on what it is, whether they like it or don’t like it. Whoever this is, I’d love to talk to him face to face.
You’ve mentioned you were influenced by Johnny Cash and Kris Kristofferson, folks like that, but I could hear some influences on “Beautiful Door” from Jethro Tull, Simon & Garfunkel and Jeff Healey. Am I just making that up? Oh, no, absolutely. I actually saw Jethro Tull for the first time in 1973 or something like that. I love the “Aqualung” album. I’ve had so many influences from old-fashioned country to the British Invasion to Cream, Deep Purple and all those guys.
The song “Always Countin’” is about obsessive-compulsive disorder. I also read you have a phobia against silverware? No, a lot of those things get blown out of proportion. I don’t have a phobia about silverware. Really old, heavy silverware that looks like something you would’ve used in the 1800s or something, I prefer not to eat with that. I like modern things. Like in hotels. I don’t want to stay in some dusty old castle. I get kind of creeped out by old dusty stuff.
You’re known as a huge baseball fan. How do you feel about Barry Bonds about to break Hank Aaron’s home-run record? That’s such a mixed-up situation it’s hard to know what to think about it. I’m not a Bonds-basher like a lot of people. The guy can hit the ball. If anything, I would just say he’s a left-handed hitter and they’ve got a really short rightfield wall. They don’t mention guys who are hitting .220 with one homer and 12 RBIs who are using steroids. They only mention the guys who are very famous. I’m sure a lot of them are doing it.
A number of old-time movie stars changed their names because their names were too Jewish or too ethnic. Your first name, Billy Bob, is associated with some negative stereotypes about the Arkansas backcountry, where you’re from. Did you encounter prejudice against people from the South when you came to Hollywood? I did. I was always being cast as the redneck or the bad guy. But once you become famous, they’ll cast you as just about anything. I could walk into a major motion-picture studio these days and say I’d like to play Bette Davis and they’d say, “Hey, good idea!”
That I’d pay to see. And that must be a big difference than your early days when you were so poor, you were down to potatoes. Yeah, that was the last thing I had. I was living in a hovel over in Glendale, Calif. I was kind of embarrassed. I was in an acting class and I knew some people, but I was too embarrassed to tell them I didn’t have any money left and I’d lost my job. When those were gone, I had nothing for a number of days.
Now that you have plenty of money, do you remember what being poor was like? Oh, yes. I remember everything I went through. I’ve lived an eclectic kind of life. That’s why when you read something written like this in the Vegas paper, when I think of what I’ve been through in my life, what I did to get here, and how I grew up as a musician, and yet you have 19-year-olds out there, and the only time you’ve heard of them is when they do their one appearance on “Saturday Night Live,” and they have one record and they’re gone. They’re popular for a moment and those guys get considered seriously when they put a record out. When people like that say something irresponsible, they’re just trying to be clever. It’s like, “Oh, you were married to Angelina Jolie, I’m going to hate you.”
I imagine when you and Angelina adopted from Cambodia, the perspective of having been very poor must have gone into your own thinking? Oh yeah. I went there two or three times, so yeah, that’s a subject that’s very close to me.
Did you introduce her to these ideas? No, no. She’s always had her own things. That was her idea. I gotta tell you. She’s a great individual. You know we were married in Vegas? But that’s the way we always did things. We’d known each other for years before we got married. She was always a great person. To this day, I defend her every chance I get. There are plenty of people who can sit back and talk about it, and say that all of a sudden she’s Miss Saving The World. But you know what? She is. Who could fault her for that?
After you directed “All the Pretty Horses,” you said you never wanted to direct again. Have you changed your mind? Yeah, I’ve got one I want to do now. But it’s a period drama and it’s hard to get a studio to do that. It’s the story of Floyd Collins. He’s a guy who got trapped in a cave in 1925 in Kentucky. It became a huge media story, like Baby Jessica in the well. It was huge news, the guy was in there for 18 days. It became a carnival, a big circus, with people selling corn liquor and a hamburger stand. The reason I want to make the movie is not to comment on the media but, it’s really about human nature. The media wouldn’t exist as the monster that it is if the people didn’t want it. People like to see other people suffer for their own entertainment. It’s kind of reality television before there was television.
Do people come up to you and mimic the signature sound of your “Sling Blade” character, “Mmmhmm.” And do they try to get you to do it? Oh, yeah, they do it all the time. And no, I don’t do it. I can’t. It’s silly for me to do that. I get more people wanting to do it for me than wanting me to do it.
