TV COWBOY BILLY BOB IS TICKING TIME BOMB
Fears health woes will catch up to him
BIZARRE Billy Bob Thornton is riding high on his smash western series “1883” — but sources say his bad ticker could mean he’s living on borrowed time!
“Billy Bob is appreciating every day he has and enjoying his work, his family and his friends,” says a mole, “but knowing his heart could explode at any time is always at the back of his mind!” Now an avid vegan to ward off cardiac issues, Billy Bob admits to suffering from obsessive-compulsive disorder and various phobias and has a family history of heart problems. His brother Jimmy Don was killed by a heart attack in 1988.
Billy Bob came close to death just a few years before losing his brother.
The 66-year-old Oscar winner suffered heart failure in 1985 at 30 shortly after leaving his Arkansas home for Hollywood — where he subsisted on potatoes while trying to catch a break as an actor. Sources say he had a dangerous heart inflammation known as myocarditis. Then in 1998, the 6-foot actor went on a crash diet for his role in “A Simple Plan” and just couldn’t stop — plummeting from 197 to 138 pounds! Two years later — the same year he married Angelina Jolie — Billy Bob was hospitalized with a health crisis that sparked heart attack talk. He started dating wife No. 6, 57-year-old makeup artist Connie Angland, in 2003 in the wake of his divorce from Angie. They married in 2014 and share daughter Bella, 17, one of Billy Bob’s four kids. While Thornton’s rep insists talk of heart problems “is not true,” an insider says the TV cowboy “doesn’t want to wind up in the hospital again with his family crying beside him” but knows he could die at any moment — and that scares him silly!