Billy Bob Thornton Quotes

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.

Usually when I'm writing, I kind of know what it is before I start writing and I write stream of consciousness style.

If i knew my life would turn out this way, i would of killed myself a long time ago.

Anytime you get a chance to play some extreme character, in any direction, it's always a great blessing.

I think people can live a religious life and yet believe in things maybe outside the box a little bit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

When people wear shoes that don't fit them, it says something about their soul. Generally, I think it means they are good people.

I can't imagine laying a finger on my kids. I go the other way and probably because my father was so abusive.

It's not that I don't understand it. But people think if you speak with an English accent it somehow makes you smarter.

I quit flying years ago. I don't want to die with tourists.

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.

I was the fattest baby in Clark County, Arkansas. They put me in the newspaper. It was like a prize turnip.

There was a time when I could walk down the street, Hollywood Boulevard or Beverly Drive, and somebody would come up to you and they would say, "Excuse me," and you'd barely hear them, and you'd turn around and you'd say, "Yeah, how you doing?" and they'd say, "I'm really sorry to bother you, but my aunt is a big fan of yours, and would you mind terribly if you'd just sign this paper," or whatever it is, and you're happy to do that, and the people are pretty nice about it.

I've really dreamed of doing television. All of us do television, coming up. But when I was coming up, television was a black hole for actors. Now, television has a certain cache. Now everybody wants to be on TV because they're doing adult dramas. If you're an actor, it's like, "Well, get me on television," because it's the only place you can do it and also make a living at it. If my kids need shoes, I better do a TV show because I damn sure don't make any money with independent films.

You know, what's popular? Okay, vampires are very popular. Let me make my vampire movie. I'm not saying you can't make a vampire movie. But if you're going to do one do something crazy. I mean don't just get a bunch of, like I said, models and make them into vampires so you'll get an audience. You know maybe get some ugly vampires for a change.

I'll always consider myself a Southerner. A lot of people put California down, but my dreams were realized there.

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.

The movies I've made about the South, they were my experience and it's something that I know.

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.

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.

I am fairly embraced by the Hollywood community, and I love making movies and I love acting, but I'm not real crazy about the Hollywood system. So the fact that they embrace me is a shock to me because I tell them to kiss my ass all the time. I don't understand why they haven't thrown me out on my ear. The other thing is I don't participate much. I have very few friends within the movie community. I hang out with some guys I've known forever. They're all broke and eat me out of house and home. But I stay home mostly and I don't go to the parties. Maybe that preserves me.

I'm as highly insecure as a human can be.

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.

Television is making, there was in independent film renaissance late '80s through the mid-90's. It was an amazing time. Television is doing that right now. So that's why everybody wants to do it. I mean if you're writing stuff like, you know, Fargo, or True Detective, or any of these things that are on, Breaking Bad, there are no rules in television.

If you love somebody let them know every day.

A lot of kids, when they go to church, they don't really pay much attention to what they're saying or whatever.

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.

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.

I grew up in Arkansas and that's the law. My dad was a high school basketball coach, so I was raised as a coach's son and I was a baseball player back in Arkansas, and I lived in Texas, too, so I was just surrounded by sports. So that's what I was going to do: Pitch for the St Louis Cardinals. I had no idea I was going to be an actor. So I got my collar bone broken in the Kansas City Royals training camp. And once I got hurt I started doing other things for a while.

I figured I would have to tell someone to kiss my ass before it was all over, and I have
twice.

Marketing is the devil.

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.

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.

I actually am a phobic twitchy sort of nervous guy.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Man, I was drowning in sadness. And Angelina, she lifted me right up out of there.

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.

Directing is a big responsibility to take on. I think I'm only good at doing things I know very well. I don't direct movies because I get offered the new vampire movie or science fiction movie. I don't get offered those, anyway, but if I did, I would just tell 'em, "Look, I'm the wrong guy." I only do things about people and situations, and I do the ones that I think I'm the best guy for the job on, which is usually something I generate myself.

Kids won't watch older movies - they want to see what's hip right now.

Life is magical and I guess my thing is I wish that people wanted that magic.

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.

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.

Directing takes a good chunk of your life out. It's a very hard thing. As an actor, you go in for a couple of months and do your job, and then you move onto another one. As a director, it's with you for quite some time and you're responsible for the entire thing, whether the results are good or bad, or whether people throw darts at you or put you on a pedestal.

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.

When I was coming up in the '80s television, if you were on television that meant either you were a young actor just coming up like I was, or you were an older actor whose career was over and you had to go on television.

They were on the set of Bad Santa but I tried to keep the headphones away from them. My kids have seen Sling Blade, they've seen Armageddon, Bandits and Friday Night Lights. They have not seen Monster's Ball, nor will they ever, even when they're sixty [laughter]. I will leave it in my will that they can never see it.

I'm more influenced by novelists than I am by filmmakers.

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.

I believe in running through the rain and crashing into the person you love and having your lips bleed on each other.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Playing normal-looking characters really intimidatesme. I got into acting to play anyone but me.

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.

I never wanted to write a book, and people have asked me for years to do it.

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.

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.

People over 40 stay home and watch television, that's why there are no movies out there.

Everything is very convenient now and it would be real nice if somehow people started going back to the movie theater. And it's people of my generation. It's their fault in a lot of ways, people over 40. It's their fault that the only movies are about robots and beautiful vampires. It's wild, all vampires are beautiful.

Somewhere along the line we stopped believing we could do anything. And if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing.

The thing about a motion picture is that look of film on a big screen takes you into a magical.

I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.

I didn't cry at my father's funeral, and I felt guilty about that. Of course, he got sick not too long after he and I had had that final altercation, and I felt real guilty because of that, too. Then years later, one day, I was probably in my late twenties, early thirties, and I just broke down crying, because I finally got my father.

Robert Duvall taught me years ago. He said, "You know theatre is not real. I don't like plays." You know, he doesn't like plays. And I agree with him in certain ways, you know. They can be fun. I don't mind going to see them. I went and saw Phantom of the Opera. I thought hey, that's cool. Look at the mask and all that.

Usually when you're playing a character, you think a lot about their backstory.

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.

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.