260 Quotes by Billy Bob Thornton

My mom was a psychic. And there’s a movie called The Gift that I’d written years ago with Cate Blanchett which is loosely based on my mom.

When you’re a director, for two years or at least a year and a half, that’s what your life is. So if you’re gonna do it, you gotta be ready to do it and it has to be something you care about. I’ve found something that I do care about.

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.

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.

It’s not that I don’t understand it. But people think if you speak with an English accent it somehow makes you smarter.

I can’t imagine laying a finger on my kids. I go the other way and probably because my father was so abusive.

Usually when I’m writing, I kind of know what it is before I start writing and I write stream of consciousness style.

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.

I used to put that I studied with Stella Adler on my resume. I never met Stella Adler. But if you told a casting director you studied with Stella Adler all the sudden they’d let you in the door.