Ol’ Billy Bob is Eros extraordinaire
WHAT kind of man could provoke one of Hollywood’s leading actors into such a jealous rage over his beautiful wife that he scrawled accusations of infidelity on a mirror in his own blood?
Surely a young, handsome heartstopper whose star is at its zenith – not a 61-year-old with five failed marriages behind him. And yet it is Billy Bob Thornton who, it has emerged in US court papers, was linked to Pirates Of The Caribbean star Johnny Depp’s then-wife, 30-year-old Amber Heard.
It wouldn’t have been the first time the rubber-lipped, silverhaired actor and filmmaker has punched above his weight on the romance front. Once married to Angelina Jolie, Thornton is Hollywood’s most unlikely Lothario.
A six-times-married womaniser who boasts of kissing a woman so hard he draws blood and who never wasted a limo journey with Jolie just staring out of the window. During one awards ceremony interview, they revealed they’d had sex on their way to the event. Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Errol Flynn? Mere novices in the ways of Eros compared to Billy Bob.
Mad as a fruitcake and as strange-looking as a fruit bat, Thornton is one of the entertainment world’s great enigmas. Just what is the secret of his success with beautiful women?
Thornton has denied having an affair with Heard but that Depp is convinced he did speaks volumes for his reputation.
Although he looks like an unshaven car mechanic, with heavily tattooed arms and a wardrobe dominated by silver belts, black leather and baseball caps, he talks like a Southern gentleman. And even doughty female interviewers can be unnerved by how long Thornton maintains eye contact.
Angelina Jolie says Thornton was first described to her as “like a hillbilly Orson Welles”. He combines a rough diamond appearance and neurotic erudition. The son of a teacher father and a mother who claimed to be a psychic, Thornton was raised in poverty in Arkansas. A former rock-band drummer, he worked in a sawmill and laid asphalt before trying to make it as an actor in LA.
Thornton’s marriages have been short, but hardly sweet. He wed first wife, Melissa Lee Gatlin, in 1978. “I got drunk, went bowling and got married,” he later explained.They had a daughter, Amanda, but Thornton ended it after two years.Amanda is serving 20 years in Florida for the aggravated manslaughter of a oneyear-old child.
Thornton married again in 1986 to little-known actress Toni Lawrence. As with wife number three, aspiring thespian Cynthia Williams, whom he wed in 1990, the marriage lasted just two years. In 1993, Russian former Playboy Playmate Pietra Cherniak became wife number four. She ended the marriage in 1997, accusing Thornton of abuse, which he denied.
He began seeing Jurassic Park star Laura Dern, but that ended in 1999 when Jolie came into his life. Dern said: “I left our home to work on a movie, and while I was away, my boyfriend got married and I’ve never heard from him again.”
Thornton and Jolie wed in 2000 in Las Vegas. She already had a wild-child reputation, boasting of dabbling in drugs, lesbianism and sadomasochism. But her