Billy Bob Thornton has carved out a distinctive niche in Hollywood. For years, he took on minor roles, such as Johnny Tyler in “Tombstone,” but his breakthrough came with the 1996 film “Sling Blade.” This film, often considered Thornton’s finest work, showcased his talents not just as the lead actor playing Karl Childers but also as the writer and director, earning him an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Since then, Thornton has navigated a diverse array of projects, ranging from the intense drama “Monster’s Ball” to the uproarious comedy “Bad Santa.” Currently, he captivates audiences in the Paramount+ series “Landman,” where his performance has garnered praise from Looper’s review.

Though Thornton is now a celebrated figure in Hollywood, his journey was far from smooth. His early life was marred by hardship, and even as his career began to gain momentum, personal tragedies seemed to shadow him. When witnessing Thornton deliver a particularly emotional scene, it’s likely he draws from some of his own challenging life experiences.

In discussions about Hollywood’s “nepo babies” and the advantages some stars enjoy, Billy Bob Thornton stands out as someone who climbed the ranks through sheer talent and determination. Raised in severe poverty in Arkansas, Thornton had no industry connections to ease his path. His upbringing lacked basic amenities that many take for granted. As he shared with Cowboys and Indians Magazine, “We didn’t have running water, electricity, or anything. Went in an outhouse until I was about 9, because I grew up at my grandmother’s house.”

For a significant part of his childhood, Thornton was surrounded by family, but one relationship was particularly difficult—that with his father. As he confided to Today, his father, a Korean War veteran, was often abusive. “My father was a very violent Irishman and so there was abuse both verbal and physical in our household,” he recalled. “He was a Korean war veteran in the navy and he was a very intense guy who I don’t think I ever had a conversation with.”

One thing Thornton did have access to was books. His mother studied English in college, so he was well-acquainted with the works of William Faulkner and John Steinbeck. He just had to read them via a coal oil lantern. He also wasn’t alone for much of his childhood, as his grandmother’s house was filled with plenty of extended family members. While they didn’t have much, Thornton mentioned how they still found joy in life. “Every day was full of characters and funny stuff. We found humor in just about everything,” he explained. So, in that sense, he wasn’t poor at all. 

It sounds like for at least a period of time, Billy Bob Thornton had a ton of family around he could spend time with. But one family member he couldn’t escape from was his father, and Thornton told Today how he could be abusive toward him growing up. “My father was a very violent Irishman and so there was abuse both verbal and physical in our household,” he recalled. “He was a Korean war veteran in the navy and he was a very intense guy who I don’t think I ever had a conversation with.”

One way in which his father would try to bond with his boys was by taking them to a car crash scene and just having them look at it. Thornton used this odd childhood experience as fodder for his 2012 movie “Jayne Mansfield’s Car,” which he starred in, wrote, and directed. Still, even with this abuse, Thornton took care of his father during his final days. Shortly after he graduated from high school, his dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. He described the anguish to NBC News: “I just — I felt tortured myself. And I didn’t want to see somebody else in that kind of pain.”

Billy Bob Thornton already had several things working against him growing up, and there was one more to add to the pile: He also struggled with dyslexia, although he was unaware he had it until he was an adult. Without an official diagnosis, everyone around him in school looked down on him. “I was just kind of known around school as a moron,” he told Men’s Journal. “Nobody really encouraged me. Dyslexia drives you, because you’re trying to overcome this thing.” It didn’t stop him from pursuing creative endeavors, as he would write short stories as a child and he took drama class in high school. 

Thornton also has obsessive-compulsive disorder, something he attributes to his rough upbringing. For him personally, his OCD manifests in the form of doing constant mathematics in his head, telling NBC News, “Certain numbers represent certain people. And I can’t use that number in a certain circumstance. And then I have to use it in another circumstance.” He’s also discussed various phobias, such as not wanting to be around antique furniture or silver cutlery. His phobias also extend to Komodo dragons, although he probably doesn’t have to worry about coming into contact with those too often.

Billy Bob Thornton started getting into acting in high school, but he didn’t always think that would lead to a career. In fact, one of his earliest passions was baseball, and he had a real shot of going professional. He explained to SiriusXM PGA Tour how he had a solid record as a pitcher throughout high school, and during his senior year, he was invited to try out for the Kansas City Royals. It’s a day that could’ve gotten him closer to the pros, but it wound up changing his life in a different way. 

“I was there for about a half an hour before I got my collarbone broken,” Thornton explained. “I was standing over by the first base coach’s box talking to a guy. They were taking some infield practice, and the third baseman threw over to first base, first baseman wasn’t looking and it hit me right in my collarbone.” Even after his professional baseball dreams were dashed, he had another career in mind.

An untold truth of Billy Bob Thornton is that he’s an accomplished musician, having released several albums infused with rockabilly and alternative country. He planned on music being his full-time gig, and a friend invited him out to Los Angeles, suggesting he could pursue acting. Thornton wasn’t convinced he had a future as an actor, but he made the trek anyway. Eventually, he’d return to his baseball roots starring in the 2005 remake of “Bad News Bears,” playing ornery coach Morris Buttermaker. 

There are countless stories of people moving to Hollywood to make it big and running into one hurdle after the next. These tend to be on a professional level, but Billy Bob Thornton found himself in the midst of a health crisis upon moving to Los Angeles. Due to malnutrition brought on from not being able to afford a well-rounded diet, Thornton had to be rushed to the hospital and was diagnosed with myocarditis. This is an inflammation within the heart muscles that can make it difficult for the organ to pump blood efficiently. 

He needed to turn his life around when it came to food, and these days, he adheres to a predominantly vegan diet. However, he’s admitted in the past that he will break away from veganism if Texas barbecue is on the table. While a vegan diet has surely helped him become more healthy, he has battled eating disorders over the years, partly brought on by work. He admitted that for one role in particular he lost a substantial amount of weight to attain a more gaunt aesthetic, which led to him developing anorexia. With some dietary adjustments, he was able to recover.  

Billy Bob Thornton had a hard time landing any gigs when he first moved to Los Angeles and turned his attention to acting, which he attributed to his southern roots during an interview with Fox News. He mentioned experiencing some prejudice due to his background, which made him hesitant to go for certain parts. “It certainly makes you, at least for a period of time, stay in your wheelhouse,” he said. “A guy from the Bronx can play a guy from Mississippi in the movies, I’ve found over the years. But a guy from Mississippi can’t really play a guy from the Bronx.”

He worked a litany of odd jobs, from telemarketing to wind farming, all while trying to get some momentum going for his acting career. At a holiday party, he had a chance encounter with Billy Wilder, one of the few directors to have never made a bad movie with such hits to his name as “Double Indemnity” and “Sunset Boulevard.” Wilder encouraged him to make his own opportunities by getting more into screenwriting. With that in mind, Thornton, along with his friend Tom Epperson, wrote the crime thriller “One False Move.” Years later, he’d write and direct “Sling Blade,” for which he won an Academy Award. Thornton’s career is a perfect case study of how sometimes to get ahead, you need to make your own luck happen. 

Long before Billy Bob Thornton won an Oscar, long before he was a household name in Tinseltown, he suffered a devastating personal blow. His younger brother, Jimmy Don Thornton, passed away in 1988 at just 30 years old due to an undiagnosed heart condition. It’s something he spoke about at length during an interview with OWN, revealing how he still carries that emotional wound with him. “I’ve never been the same since my brother died,” the actor said. “There’s a melancholy in me that never goes away. I’m 50 percent happy and 50 percent sad at any given moment.”

That segment came out in 2014, over 20 years since he lost his brother and yet he still carried the weight with him. Like his brother, Jimmy was a musician in his own right. In fact, Billy Bob Thornton included two of his brother’s songs, “Island Avenue” and “Emily,” on his 2003 album “The Edge of the World.” It’s one of the many ways Thornton continues to remember his brother all these years since his death. “I don’t want to forget what it felt like when he died, because he deserves that,” he told OWN. “That’s how important he was to me.” 

Billy Bob Thornton has been married a total of six times throughout his life. He was first married to Melissa Lee Gatlin from 1978 to 1980 and they have one daughter together. Gatlin cited “incompatibility and adultery on his part” as her reason for filing for the divorce. In 1986, Thornton married Toni Lawrence, a fellow actor, but, like his relationship with Gatlin, they also formally divorced after just two years. 

His marriage to his third wife, actor Cynda Williams (who starred in Thornton’s “One False Move”), would also only last two years, spanning from 1990 to 1992. He married model Pietra Dawn Cherniak the year following his divorce from Williams. The pair had two children together, but, toward the end, some disturbing accusations were made against Thornton: Cherniak’s sister went to the tabloids to claim how he had allegedly stalked her. Cherniak herself accused Thornton of spousal abuse during their divorce proceedings, but the actor strenuously denied this. 

Of course, Thornton’s most famous (or infamous) pairing was with Angelina Jolie, as the two would regularly engage in public displays of affection on red carpets. The two were married from 2000 to 2003, and, at that point, Thornton vowed to never get married again. But his last relationship seems to have stuck. He met his current wife, Connie Angland, in 2003, and the pair married after a long courtship in 2014. They share a daughter together. 

Billy Bob Thornton had his first child, Amanda, with Melissa Lee Gatlin. The two didn’t have much of a relationship early in her life although they apparently reconnected later on. In 2008, his daughter, now Amanda Brumfield, made headlines after being accused of manslaughter.

Brumfield was looking after a friend’s young daughter, Olivia Madison Garcia, overnight with a playpen for the child to stay in. Brumfield said that later in the evening, she saw the child trying to climb out of the playpen before falling to the floor. The girl became unresponsive several hours later, so an ambulance took her to the hospital where she was later pronounced dead. She was ultimately convicted of aggravated manslaughter and sentenced to 20 years in prison. Thornton provided a statement regarding the situation, saying (via ABC News), “Anytime a baby’s life is lost is an unimaginable tragedy and my heart goes out to the baby’s family and loved ones.”

Brumfield’s case drew the attention of The Innocence Project, an organization that aims to reform the criminal justice system by pointing out flaws in convictions and helping wrongfully convicted people walk free once more. The association believed what happened to Garcia was a horrible accident but that Brumfield did not exhibit any abuse or neglect to warrant a 20-year sentence. In 2020, Brumfield was released from prison after serving eight-and-a-half years, but it didn’t come at the hands of The Innocence Project. Instead, state prosecutors agreed to let her out early if she withdrew her claims of innocence from the court. 

In what’s fast becoming one of his most beloved roles, Billy Bob Thornton stars as Tommy Norris in Taylor Sheridan’s acclaimed Paramount+ series “Landman,” which is set and filmed in West Texas. “Landman” is all about the dangerous world of securing land rich with oil to turn a tidy profit. There are a lot of explosions, but they had nothing to do with the injury that Thornton suffered on set.

There’s a scene in the Season 2 premiere where Tommy’s wife, Angela (Ali Larter), throws plates at him in a fit of anger. Some of the broken pieces made contact with Thornton, who told Entertainment Weekly, “They were either real or they were damn near real, because they were heavy. They felt like plates to me! And I got a few pieces of shrapnel.” It doesn’t sound as though his injuries were too severe, and it made for an entertaining way to kick off the season with pasta and plates flying everywhere. 

With an Oscar and a lead role on a hit TV series, Thornton is living the Hollywood dream. It may not have always seemed like he was going to make it, but that’s okay — he told Rolling Stone in a candid interview how he’s grateful to have become famous later in life. “There’s no telling what would’ve happened to me if I’d have become famous in my twenties,” he said. “I probably wouldn’t be here, honestly.”

If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.

If you need help with an eating disorder, or know someone who does, help is available. Visit the National Eating Disorders Association website or contact NEDA’s Live Helpline at 1-800-931-2237. You can also receive 24/7 Crisis Support via text (send NEDA to 741-741).

If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, please contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, call the National Alliance on Mental Illness helpline at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264), or visit the National Institute of Mental Health website.