Billy Bob Thornton

Tue 10th Feb - 7:00PM

'Sling Blade' made him a household name, as well as his turbulent love life, especially his latest ex, Angelina Jolie. Oscar winner, actor, scriptwriter director and musician.

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Billy Bob Thornton
born: 04-08-1955
birth place: Hot Springs, Arkansas

Billy Bob Thornton was born William Robert Thornton. His father was William Raymond Thornton, also known as Billy Ray, and he worked as a high school history teacher and basketball coach; Billy’s mother was Virginia R. Faulkner; she was half-Italian, and half Choctaw Indian.

His mother had a highly unusual occupation - she was a gifted psychic, and actually predicted that Billy would become a famous actor and win an Oscar one day - happily, she was right! Billy has three younger brothers - James Donald (Jimmy Don), who is now dead, James (Jim) Bean and John David.

Billy Bob’s early life and upbringing was far from glitzy. He spent much of his childhood living with over a dozen members of his extended family in his grandfather’s humble log cabin in the woods around the small hamlet of Alpine, which boasted a population of around 100 people. His grandfather was a forest ranger, and his house had no running water or electricity; he grew up learning to read by the light of a coal-oil lamp, and the family’s staple diet was based around what his grandfather had managed to shoot that day, which might include deer or possum.

A few years later, the Thornton family moved to the town of Malvern, where Billy Bob discovered his first true love - rock music! He soon acquired a taste for the music of Elvis Presley and the Beatles, the global megastars of the 1960s. At the age of 9, he was given his first drum kit, and he soon undertook his first public concert, at the local school PTA meeting. He soon formed a band, called the Coveys (named after a black baseball star with the San Francisco Giants); he later formed a second band, called Stone Cold Fever, and was keen on playing the hits of Creedence Clearwater Revival.

Even as a boy, young Billy Bob had a nose for trouble, and accidentally burnt down someone’s barn whilst smoking cigarettes with his school-mates. He didn’t particularly excel at high school, and was far more interested in the music gigs he played in local bars at the weekends. After high school, he worked a succession of blue-collar jobs, including labouring on a construction site for the Highways Department., driving bulldozers and working in a factory making screen doors. He later landed a job in a nursing home in Malvern, where he first of all became the maintenance man, but then progressed to organising the home’s entertainment.

Throughout the 1970s, Billy Bob firmly believed that his future destiny lay in rock music. He formed a group called the Tres Hombres, named after ZZ Top’s hit album of 1973: he found some small measure of success as a musician, and even succeeded in releasing an album called Gunslinger. In order to make ends meet, he would also work as a roadie for other bands, including a Canadian group called Lighthouse, whilst they toured the United States.

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