Why do so many beauties fall for Hollywood’s most unlikely lothario?
He’s 61 and no oil painting, but Billy Bob Thornton’s had SIX wives and drove Johnny Depp mad with jealousy
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 heart-stopper chap whose star is at his zenith — not a 61-year-old with five failed marriages behind him.
And yet it is Billy Bob Thornton who, it has emerged in U.S. court papers, was linked to Pirates Of The Caribbean star Johnny Depp’s then-wife, 30-year-old Amber Heard.
The pair are co-stars in Heard’s latest film, a screen version of Martin Amis’s novel London Fields, and despite a 31-year-age gap, it wouldn’t have been the first time the rubber-lipped, silverhaired actor and filmmaker had punched above his weight on the romance front.
Once famously married to Angelina Jolie, one of the most striking actresses of her generation, 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 wife number five — Jolie — just staring out of the window. During one awards ceremony interview, they revealed they’d just 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, who also starred with Heard in her 2014 film debut Friday Night Lights, has strenuously denied having an affair with her, although the fact that Depp is convinced he did speaks volumes for Billy Bob’s 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 — slowly and infinitely politely. And even doughty female interviewers can be a little unnerved by how long Thornton maintains eye contact.
Young actresses tend to be an impressionable bunch — putty in the hands of a man who by all accounts has an Olympian gift for flattery.
Angelina Jolie says Thornton was first described to her as ‘like a hillbilly Orson Welles’, and he has a combination of 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, the family living in a shack with no electricity or plumbing, and sometimes having to dine on fried squirrel. A former rockband drummer, he worked in a sawmill and laid asphalt before moving to Los Angeles to try to make it as an actor and screenwriter.
He has extensive tattoos, many of which celebrate his lovers — hostages to fortune when he inevitably moves on. Before dating his current wife — Thornton disguised a prominent ‘Angelina’ tattoo on his arm by turning it into an angel and adding the word ‘Peace’.
In person, he has a self-effacing sense of humour and a winning smile. ‘I’ve always had this smooth talk with the ladies. I don’t know why, but as far back as elementary school, even my mum’s friends liked me,’ he says.
HIS formula for seduction? ‘I believe in running through the rain and crashing into the person you love and having your lips bleed on each other,’ he has said. Not a tactic that would work on all women.
The star of films such as Monster’s Ball and Love Actually, Thornton’s marriages have been short, but hardly sweet. He wed first wife, Melissa Lee Gatlin, in 1978. ‘Well, I got drunk, went bowling and got married’, he later explained.
They had a daughter, Amanda, but Thornton ended it after two years. He remains estranged from Amanda, who is serving 20 years in Florida for the aggravated manslaughter of a one-yearold child, the daughter of a friend.
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. They had two children, William and Harry — now 23 and 22. Cherniak ended the marriage in 1997, accusing Thornton of spousal abuse, which he denied.
He then began seeing Jurassic Park star Laura Dern, but that ended in 1999 when Jolie came into Thornton’s life on the set of Pushing Tin, a film about air traffic controllers.
Dern only realised she was history when Jolie turned up at a party with ‘Billy Bob’ tattooed on her shoulder. ‘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,’ she said.
Thornton and Jolie wed in 2000 in Las Vegas, despite the fact he was 20 years older. But it was not just the age difference that made the union seem unbalanced.
Then 25, and at her most ravishing, Jolie was a vivacious extrovert. Thornton was an introverted agoraphobic who — when Jolie threw him a surprise party — visibly blanched and retreated to the kitchen.
The daughter of actor Jon Voight already revelled in a wild-child reputation, boasting of dabbling in drugs, lesbianism and sadomasochism. But her behaviour went off the charts when paired with Thornton.
When it came to disturbingly gothic behaviour, Dracula and Frankenstein combined had nothing on these two. They shared an obsession with blood — Thornton insists ‘there’s a possibility I may have been reincarnated from a vampire’ — and famously exchanged vials of each other’s blood, which they wore around their necks. Thornton even painted ‘Till the end of time’ above their bed in Jolie’s blood.
They bought a replica electric chair for their Los Angeles home and Thornton said, possibly seriously, they planned to put it at their dining table. They talked of their padded sex room and admitted on air to the host of the MTV Awards they’d had sex on the way to the ceremony. Thornton added to his collection of tattoos, with a couple pledging undying love to Jolie, and she got matching ones. They celebrated their first wedding anniversary by buying two burial plots, side by side in an Arkansas graveyard. They just couldn’t be apart. Thornton said he even wore his wife’s underwear in the gym. The intense pair were said to be so devoted that Thornton said he had a ‘legal piece of paper in her blood, saying that I could never leave her for all of eternity’. Their marriage actually lasted just two years — the Thornton standard. They separated in June 2002. Thornton initially claimed she had simply been ‘too good’ for him. ‘I always thought I was sort of Quasimodo or the Phantom Of The Opera hiding in the catacombs,’ he said. ‘And when I was with her, I think that really reached its heights.’
Coming from a man who clearly has no confidence problems with women, it sounded unconvincing. In fact, first wife Melissa insisted Thornton cheated on Jolie as she suspected he had on all his wives. Jolie appeared to suspect as much, saying her ex ‘hasn’t been as honourable as he could be’. He insists he was faithful.
After the ignominious end to his boasts about eternal love, Thornton went for the safe option and dated someone who wasn’t famous. He met Connie Angland in 2002 on the set of comedy Bad Santa where she was a puppeteer. They have a daughter, Bella, 11, and Connie became wife number six in 2014.
He still found time, however, to have at least one other dalliance. In 2008, it emerged Thornton was involved with actress Tea Leoni, then the wife of X-Files star David Duchovny. He found racy texts from Thornton on her phone.
Thornton and Leoni both denied a romance and Billy Bob has reportedly assured his wife Connie that Depp’s accusations are also fantasy.
But he shouldn’t be surprised to have provoked suspicions. ‘Here’s the thing about women,’ he said once. ‘I like all women. I don’t always like what they do. Every now and then they’ll try to screw you on something, but I just like women.’
And, it appears, the feeling is mutual.