Top 100 Billy Bob Thornton Quotes
#1. The last movie I did, I was very lucky: I got to work with probably the best actor of our era, Billy Bob Thornton. He's just incredible. I was like a sponge: I soaked up everything he had to say.
Tim McGraw
#2. I'm getting good offers, as good as ever sometimes. I just finished a thing with Billy Bob Thornton that was the most unique part I've ever played in my life, in the most unique project.
Robert Duvall
#3. I get to hang out with Billy Bob Thornton at his house. We hang out over there every time we're in L.A., because he doesn't go out. We'll hang and he'll play us some of his tunes. It's pretty awesome.
Chris Daughtry
#4. Nothing wrong with computer as things. They can work wonders in communications and business and medicine and everything else.
Billy Bob Thornton
#5. I used to put that I studied with Stella Adler on my resume. I never met Stella Adler. But if you told a casting director you studied with Stella Adler all the sudden they'd let you in the door.
Billy Bob Thornton
#7. The movies I've made about the South, they were my experience and it's something that I know.
Billy Bob Thornton
#9. Somewhere along the line we stopped believing we could do anything. And if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing.
Billy Bob Thornton
#10. I don't see anything wrong with a cell phone. That's great. You have a flat tire in the middle of the night; it works better than digging in your pocket for a quarter and looking for a payphone eight miles down the road.
Billy Bob Thornton
#12. If you've written it you know exactly; whoever you're playing if you've written it you already know it. As a matter of fact, you've already made the movie if you wrote it. You've made it in your head.
Billy Bob Thornton
#13. I attribute all my success to ignorance. If you don't ever think about not getting where you want to be, I think it helps you out.
Billy Bob Thornton
#14. A lot of kids, when they go to church, they don't really pay much attention to what they're saying or whatever.
Billy Bob Thornton
#15. I have been fortunate to get some really good scripts over the years and I haven't turned down anything that I regretted so far. And my manager who I've been with for over 25 years is very good at knowing what I should and shouldn't do a lot of times.
Billy Bob Thornton
#16. I figured I would have to tell someone to kiss my ass before it was all over, and I have
twice.
Billy Bob Thornton
#17. On TV you can, you know you can cram, you know, 30 people into a closet and have an orgy, and then they can all shoot up, and everybody has cigarettes in their nostrils and their ears. They don't care. So yeah, television is amazing right now.
Billy Bob Thornton
#18. I always say if you're going to do a movie about Charles de Gaulle get a Frenchman, you know. I'm not French. And yeah, sure I could get with a dialect coach and work for six months trying to talk like a Frenchman. But there's some French actors. Just get one of them, you know.
Billy Bob Thornton
#19. I believe in running through the rain and crashing into the person you love and having your lips bleed on each other.
Billy Bob Thornton
#20. I think people can live a religious life and yet believe in things maybe outside the box a little bit.
Billy Bob Thornton
#22. Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.
Billy Bob Thornton
#23. When you're a kid, somebody's mid-forties, you think they're an old man. Then you grow up and it's like, I was a kid.
Billy Bob Thornton
#25. My mom was a psychic. And there's a movie called The Gift that I'd written years ago with Cate Blanchett which is loosely based on my mom.
Billy Bob Thornton
#26. I think maybe I was instrumental in taking the stereotype out of the Southern actor is some ways. I would hope my legacy would be as a serious actor who told the truth and did parts based on the quality of part and not necessarily the money.
Billy Bob Thornton
#27. You can get famous for doing something stupid and empty, but you do something stupid and empty and you're already famous, you lose your career.
Billy Bob Thornton
#28. Tower Records is like a temple to me. I'll stay there for hours. Nobody can shop for records with me. It drives them out of their minds.
Billy Bob Thornton
#29. Movies now, you can watch a trailer for a movie on TV now and you're not sure if it's a video game or a movie. You have to wait till the end of it to see, oh, I see, those actors are in it, so that one's a movie. Oftentimes, it's based on a video game.
Billy Bob Thornton
#30. If you're 25 years old dressed up like Superman at a comic book convention, that's great. If you're 78 and you're doing it, something's wrong.
Billy Bob Thornton
#31. You read something and you just feel this makes sense. And sometimes before you even read it you have a feeling that yeah, I'm probably gonna do this one.
Billy Bob Thornton
#32. Heavy role in the movies that I've done that I have loved and fit my soul; A Simple Plan, Monster's Ball, Sling Blade, One False Move, Bad Santa even. I mean Bad Santa is a comedy, and it's a very dark comedy, and it's become like iconic, you know.
Billy Bob Thornton
#33. Reality shows are usually created by people doing and saying stupid things.
Billy Bob Thornton
#34. It's not that I don't understand it. But people think if you speak with an English accent it somehow makes you smarter.
Billy Bob Thornton
#35. I was the fattest baby in Clark County, Arkansas. They put me in the newspaper. It was like a prize turnip.
Billy Bob Thornton
#36. I can't sit through plays and musical theatre. I just want to run up onstage and mess up their hair and turn over the furniture.
Billy Bob Thornton
#37. When people are bothering you constantly when you're trying to do just a simple thing that humans do every day but they won't let you do it without bugging you about it, that was a hard thing. Because I became a movie star overnight. From a working actor and working writer to a movie star.
Billy Bob Thornton
#38. There are rules in movies. I did a movie playing a bad cop who was a heroin addict but they wouldn't let me smoke in a movie.
Billy Bob Thornton
#39. All the actors I've worked with as a director over the years I really love and I thought they were all right for the part.
Billy Bob Thornton
#40. My dad didn't hug me every day and say he loved me and anything like that.
Billy Bob Thornton
#41. I always have an idea before we even start the movie because if you hire the wrong person, within a couple of days you're going to know that and you're going to be really panicked.
Billy Bob Thornton
#42. You want to know the hardest thing about being smart?
What?
I pretty much always know what's going to happen next; there's no suspense.
Billy Bob Thornton
#43. Man, I was drowning in sadness. And Angelina, she lifted me right up out of there.
Billy Bob Thornton
#44. I never wanted to write a book, and people have asked me for years to do it.
Billy Bob Thornton
#45. People want the truth but they only want the truth so they can talk bad about you on the blog or on television. They want you to tell them the truth and it screws everybody.
Billy Bob Thornton
#46. I'm not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I'm going to know it better than someone else.
Billy Bob Thornton
#47. When you're a director, for two years or at least a year and a half, that's what your life is. So if you're gonna do it, you gotta be ready to do it and it has to be something you care about. I've found something that I do care about.
Billy Bob Thornton
#48. A lot of people are doing television now. Great, legendary actors are doing movies on cable and stuff now, and you can't blame them, because they're still doing adult dramas and adult comedies on those stations.
Billy Bob Thornton
#49. If i knew my life would turn out this way, i would of killed myself a long time ago.
Billy Bob Thornton
#50. Usually when you're playing a character, you think a lot about their backstory.
Billy Bob Thornton
#51. I can't imagine laying a finger on my kids. I go the other way and probably because my father was so abusive.
Billy Bob Thornton
#52. When I was a teenager, I read the bible cover-to-cover, and I found the Old Testament, it's a pretty bloody history book.
Billy Bob Thornton
#53. I worked as a roadie in the rock and roll business which was great fun. Very little money, very little food and the whole thing about the roadie's lifestyle is great because all the groupies have to go through the roadies to get to the rock stars. It's not necessarily true.
Billy Bob Thornton
#54. Just the other day, my assistant was on the line with Calvin Klein. Golly, I usually shop at Sears.
Billy Bob Thornton
#55. You can write when you're dyslexic, you just can't read it. But I started writing short stories as a child and I found the short story format a real nice one. I love short stories and I love short documentaries or short films of any kind.
Billy Bob Thornton
#56. People over 40 stay home and watch television, that's why there are no movies out there.
Billy Bob Thornton
#57. When people wear shoes that don't fit them, it says something about their soul. Generally, I think it means they are good people.
Billy Bob Thornton
#58. When you weigh 135 pounds and you're telling people who are 6'4 and 250 pounds to get out of your way, how do you do that? Well, a lot of that is in the eyes.
Billy Bob Thornton
#60. Comedy is harder than drama, because with comedy you're expecting a result..you make them laugh. [If] they ain't laughing then you're screwed.
Billy Bob Thornton
#61. Normally you're 21 years old and you look like Tom Cruise and you do a couple underwear commercials first and then you're a movie star. That didn't happen for me. So it was all quite overwhelming.
Billy Bob Thornton
#62. If Michelle Pfeiffer gave Mel Gibson a vial of blood to wear around his neck in a movie you'd think it was terribly romantic, everyone would cry and they'd win awards. But in real life if someone does that they'd be considered weird.
Billy Bob Thornton
#63. If you looked in magazines ... you never see me in those out-on-the-town pages. I'm either at home playing with the kids or I'm working.
Billy Bob Thornton
#64. The only times you'll see me in terms of the movie business is when I have to go to the premieres of my own movies. I don't go to see ones that aren't mine because I don't even like going to mine.
Billy Bob Thornton
#65. I know it's boring to say this but I always start with the script. I mean if it's well written and it's a character that I haven't necessarily played before.
Billy Bob Thornton
#66. Usually when I'm writing, I kind of know what it is before I start writing and I write stream of consciousness style.
Billy Bob Thornton
#67. People a lot of times say that you know it must be hard to direct yourself. That's a myth. It's easier to direct yourself. There's no middle man, you know.
Billy Bob Thornton
#68. The thing about a motion picture is that look of film on a big screen takes you into a magical.
Billy Bob Thornton
#70. Anytime you get a chance to play some extreme character, in any direction, it's always a great blessing.
Billy Bob Thornton
#71. When I was growing up, when I was 11 years old I was listening to The Mothers of Invention. You know, I mean I was a Frank Zappa fan in Arkansas.
Billy Bob Thornton
#73. I always wished there was somebody like the Coen Brothers and they appeared. And so yeah, my favorite role that I've ever done was in The Man Who Wasn't There. That's my very favorite character I've ever played.
Billy Bob Thornton
#74. Movies these days have made killers into funny people. What's that all about? I've got kids and family and friends, and I don't like bad things. I don't think they're funny, and it's irresponsible to make movies that don't show you how that's not good.
Billy Bob Thornton
#75. I mean the most important thing you can have as an actor, writer, director, or whatever you are, poet or whatever it is, is life experience. Life experience doesn't mean you have to live 50 years to have it. I mean you know a lot of people have huge life experience by the time they're in college.
Billy Bob Thornton
#77. I've never heard of anybody smoking a joint and going on a rampage. It makes you lie around on the floor and look at the ceiling. What's wrong with that?
Billy Bob Thornton
#78. If you want anybody to have a different voice, you really have to visualize and hear the voices of all these people. Sometimes when I write with specific actors in mind, it helps.
Billy Bob Thornton
#79. I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.
Billy Bob Thornton
#80. At my dad's funeral I didn't cry when my dad died. I did it years later when I forgave him, which I've totally forgiven him and I loved my dad.
Billy Bob Thornton
#81. I've watched other directors as an actor and I picked up little things here and there about cameras, [but] I wouldn't consider myself the guy you'd want to hire to do Star Trek.
Billy Bob Thornton
#82. I've been married five times, and people think that's some bizarre thing, yet I've got buddies who refuse to get married and have sex with 15 people a week. I'm like, "Which is better?" At least I was trying.
Billy Bob Thornton
#83. My process started when I was born. The process is life experience. I believe that what makes you an artist, or at least an artist who can communicate the ideas that they want to get across, are people that have life experience.
Billy Bob Thornton
#84. Every couple I know has side-by-side grave plots, but when we do it we're the biggest weirdos on the block.
Billy Bob Thornton
#85. Sometimes we don't want the bad guy to get caught because otherwise the story is over. You want to at least see it through to the end.
Billy Bob Thornton
#86. My mom is such a big supporter of mine. She still is, and always was. So I got the sort of encouragement from that side of the family.
Billy Bob Thornton
#87. Life is magical and I guess my thing is I wish that people wanted that magic.
Billy Bob Thornton
#88. I don't like movies that are shot on green screen much, you know. I mean, I know that's the thing to do, and I know that it's getting. I'll put it this way; David Lean would probably kill himself, you know, again if he knew that people were watching Lawrence of Arabia on a telephone.
Billy Bob Thornton
#89. When I saw that show Lost I learned something. Other than one sort of big dude if you're in an airplane crash only models survive. So you know sit next to somebody pretty, but anyhow.
Billy Bob Thornton
#90. I'm kind of sad and happy all the time. Just kind of like feeling, you know, full of life and confident, and at the same time terrified. I'm all of those things at once.
Billy Bob Thornton
#91. I got in drama class in high school and I only got in there because there were girls and I thought maybe I could make a grade above a C in something.
Billy Bob Thornton
#92. If someone is talking to you and tells you that you ought to do something, and you can tell they mean it, those are the scary people. Those are the people you want to watch out for.
Billy Bob Thornton
#93. People think you have to be tortured or miserable to write, but I'm finding that I get inspired a lot more these days before I'm happy.
Billy Bob Thornton
#94. I'm not much of a drinker, so I'm going to eat seven pounds of pork.
Billy Bob Thornton
#95. I'll always consider myself a Southerner. A lot of people put California down, but my dreams were realized there.
Billy Bob Thornton
#96. Kids won't watch older movies - they want to see what's hip right now.
Billy Bob Thornton
#97. I've lived in California for half of my life. It's weird, everyone thinks of me as this guy who's from the South ... I'm really a Californian.
Billy Bob Thornton
#98. Getting the nomination is like gravy. Winning would be like whatever is better than gravy.
Billy Bob Thornton
#100. I never expected to be a movie star. It's not that I didn't want to be, I didn't think about it. I wanted to be an actor.
Billy Bob Thornton
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