Billy Bob returns to Goliath

ALTHOUGH he’s best known for his acting, it’s difficult for Billy Bob Thornton (pic) to separate his writing from his acting.

In fact, he wrote and starred in Sling Blade, the movie that finally propelled him into high-octane prominence and earned him an Oscar for screenplay adaptation.

“I wrote short stories as a kid,” he recalls. “When I was in elementary school, I would just sit there and not pay attention to the school lessons whatsoever and just write short stories. And the first play I did was in the third grade. We did the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. I was the middle billy goat. I think from then on, I was an actor.

“I was in the school play, but I didn’t take it seriously in the sense that I was going to be an actor when I grew up. I was going to be a rock ’n’ roll singer or a baseball player.

“I didn’t really want to be an actor because growing up in Arkansas, it’s not like in New York or LA, where that was actually available to them. They would go see plays and think about movies.

“In Arkansas, you can be a baseball player, and you can be rock ’n’ roll singer. We had music and clubs, but you couldn’t just sit around the town square and do monologues for people. It just wasn’t an option.”

Fortunately, Thornton still finds that option open to him, as he returns for Season Three of Amazon’s terrific series Goliath.

Thornton plays a down-at-the-heels lawyer who has forsaken his profession but keeps getting pulled back into action when his conscience gets the better of him.