We didn't have a movie theatre until I was about nine, so I just didn't see them. But, once I got into movies I loved them.
I know that I loved music before I loved movies, simply because I didn't see movies as a kid.
![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.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/billy-bob-thornton-100947.jpg)
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.
After you've done 60-something movies, you're always looking for something different.
I know it's boring to say this but I always start with the script. I mean if it's well written and it's a character that I haven't necessarily played before.
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've been largely an improvisational actor for most of my career.
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.
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 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.
LA has its own vibe. It has a charm that a lot of people overlook sometimes.
You can't knock a place where you realized your dreams.
I love acting with all my heart and I love music with all my heart.
My songs aren't built around choruses or hooks or anything like that. That's kind of how I write screenplays too.
Sometimes I have songs born out of stories.
Songwriting and screenwriting aren't that different to me.
Usually with film writing I start with characters, and set about writing their story.
People's attention spans are a little shorter these days. Same thing with food and movies.
![[The lyrics and melody] usually come a little simultaneously, but I would say the lyrics are first; usually I have the idea for a story in my head, or few lines.](https://quotes.thefamouspeople.com/images/quotes/billy-bob-thornton-100929.jpg)
[The lyrics and melody] usually come a little simultaneously, but I would say the lyrics are first; usually I have the idea for a story in my head, or few lines.
I write songs on guitar and that's about how good of a guitar player I am. I can write songs on it.
I generally have lyrics first, but you can't help that when you're writing lyrics you start to get a melody in your head. So they come kind of simultaneously.
I think Americana music is music that is generally more singer/songwriter oriented. It has more to do with the songwriting. The music, it's more like stories set to music.
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.
I don't see anything wrong with a cell phone. That's great. You have a flat tire in the middle of the night; it works better than digging in your pocket for a quarter and looking for a payphone eight miles down the road.
Life is magical and I guess my thing is I wish that people wanted that magic.
I can't sit through plays and musical theatre. I just want to run up onstage and mess up their hair and turn over the furniture.
These days and times you can't do eclectic records. In the '60s you could, but not anymore.
I figured I would have to tell someone to kiss my ass before it was all over, and I have -- twice.
Anytime you get a chance to play some extreme character, in any direction, it's always a great blessing.
People a lot of times say that you know it must be hard to direct yourself. That's a myth. It's easier to direct yourself. There's no middle man, you know.
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.
I'm more influenced by novelists than I am by filmmakers.
Usually when you're playing a character, you think a lot about their backstory.
Playing normal-looking characters really intimidatesme. I got into acting to play anyone but me.
I'm as highly insecure as a human can be.
I'm kind of sad and happy all the time. Just kind of like feeling, you know, full of life and confident, and at the same time terrified. I'm all of those things at once.
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'm an actor. I'm not a performer. I'm not like a song and dance guy who can take a cane and a hat and do it. I would just you know. That's why I never did commercials.
A lot of people are doing television now. Great, legendary actors are doing movies on cable and stuff now, and you can't blame them, because they're still doing adult dramas and adult comedies on those stations.
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.
Somewhere along the line we stopped believing we could do anything. And if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing.
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.
I've never heard of anybody smoking a joint and going on a rampage. It makes you lie around on the floor and look at the ceiling. What's wrong with that?
I believe in running through the rain and crashing into the person you love and having your lips bleed on each other.
I quit flying years ago. I don't want to die with tourists.
I was the fattest baby in Clark County, Arkansas. They put me in the newspaper. It was like a prize turnip.
I've danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.
Just the other day, my assistant was on the line with Calvin Klein. Golly, I usually shop at Sears.
When people wear shoes that don't fit them, it says something about their soul. Generally, I think it means they are good people.
If you love somebody let them know every day.
Every couple I know has side-by-side grave plots, but when we do it we're the biggest weirdos on the block.
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.
Acting is playing - it's actually going out on a playground with the other kids and being in the game, and I need that. Writing satisfies that part of myself that longs to sit in my room and dream.
Marketing is the devil.
Man, I was drowning in sadness. And Angelina, she lifted me right up out of there.
Getting the nomination is like gravy. Winning would be like whatever is better than gravy.
I don't have a fear of flying; I have a fear of crashing.
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.
Movies these days have made killers into funny people. What's that all about? I've got kids and family and friends, and I don't like bad things. I don't think they're funny, and it's irresponsible to make movies that don't show you how that's not good.
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.
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.
These days movies are cut very quickly and sort of fragmented and I tend to do slower moving stories where people develop relationships with people. I think I'd probably do a lot better if I lived in Europe - I think it's more of a European sensibility somehow.
Heavy role in the movies that I've done that I have loved and fit my soul; A Simple Plan, Monster's Ball, Sling Blade, One False Move, Bad Santa even. I mean Bad Santa is a comedy, and it's a very dark comedy, and it's become like iconic, you know.
If Michelle Pfeiffer gave Mel Gibson a vial of blood to wear around his neck in a movie you'd think it was terribly romantic, everyone would cry and they'd win awards. But in real life if someone does that they'd be considered weird.
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.
Nowadays the movies that people are going to see in the theaters are the big-event movies, like Spider-Man or something, or they're 25-year-old models who are vampires, or they're very broad comedies, or they're standard action movies. So if you're going to work for a studio and do a movie for the budget that the movie needs, those are the kinds of movies you'll be in.
All I'm saying is we got plenty of Texans, and people from Montana, and New Jersey, and Wyoming, or Kansas City. We got plenty of actors. So we don't need some cat from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme, or whatever the hell it is, playing people from Montana. And in the reverse, they got plenty of people from Cardiff-upon-Rosemary-upon-Thyme that they don't need our asses coming over there trying to do British accents.
They always say 'Is there going to be a sequel to Bad Santa?' and you know, I mean, a long time ago they would talk about, you know, we're going to do a sequel to that but it was never serious. And they said 'Would you do it?' and I said out of all the movies I've done, that was a lot of fun, and maybe I would do a sequel if it ever came up and it made sense, but I said I don't think that's ever going to happen.
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.
I think I fully commit myself to any role to the extent to which I can. In other words there's some roles that maybe it's just not there, in other words on the page. You know, I mean your job is you need to play the governor and that's what you do. I mean I'm not going to stay up all night if I'm playing a functional role. And I've played a couple of functional roles. And so I'm not going to do anything other, look he's a functional guy. He says hey mister, you forgot your hat.
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.
It's the hardest thing in the world to be in a business where it's all about people accepting you, and you have a desperate need to be accepted, and yet you live in a, you operate in a society that's now very unaccepting.
When people are bothering you constantly when you're trying to do just a simple thing that humans do every day but they won't let you do it without bugging you about it, that was a hard thing. Because I became a movie star overnight. From a working actor and working writer to a movie star.
If i knew my life would turn out this way, i would of killed myself a long time ago.
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.
You can write when you're dyslexic, you just can't read it. But I started writing short stories as a child and I found the short story format a real nice one. I love short stories and I love short documentaries or short films of any kind.
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.
