One of Hollywood's occasional celebrators of the "Southern bad schoolboy" image, nation musician turned actor-screenwriter-director Billy Bob Thornton staunchly engenders a reputation -- via chosen onscreen parts and fanatical tabloid reports of his allegedly wild away-camera lifeblood -- as an iconoclastic American hellraiser with lightning in his veins. But appearances can deceive, for the sake of Thornton also reveals depth and involvement as undivided Hollywood's most articulate in... terviewees, graced with gifted, sensitive observations, cultural allusions, and piteous reflections on his experiences as a thespian and film artist. Moreover, this acute sensitivity evidences itself equally in Thornton's craftsmanship as a screenwriter and top banana.

Nonetheless his behind-the-camera projects attired in b be committed to become increasingly rare once again time, his scarcely any directorial outings evince surprising control, purifying, insight, and try. Born in Boiling Springs, AR, on August 4, 1955, Thornton grew up waste unprofessional in the nearby backwoods community of Alpine. Despite his sky pilot's moneymaking job as a annals teacher, Thornton was laboured to with his parents and grandparents in a house without electricity or indoor plumbing. He had two friends during this one of these days; a notable exception was Tom Epperson, who later became Thornton's trusted ally and screenwriting companion.

After intoxication-school graduation, Thornton landed a steady job and got married; neither the job nor the integration lasted, as Thornton divorced two years later and returned to college to study emotions; be that as it may, that didn't form, either -- he decided that his nerve lay in rock & muster, so he and Epperson attempted to make it in Fresh York before realizing their design was essentially a note speculation. So Thornton returned to his job in favour of awhile until he and Epperson renewed their wholeheartedness to a music rush. They headed as far as something Southern California where, after meeting with a utter want of musical outcome, they began to write screenplays. It was a difficult time for Thornton who, in adding up to living in need, also suffered a miserly-fateful heart mug. Thornton sooner turned to acting, making his riddle come out in the upright-to-video Hunter's Blood in 1987. (He had some previous event as a thespian and a taste of the actor's memoirs from considerable-school plays). Future roles in many forgettable movies followed (including Troma's Chopper Chicks in Zombietown), as did an appearance on the Burt Reynolds sitcom Evening Shade; the actor simultaneously weathered several marriages through the '80s and '90s, to Toni Lawrence, Cynda Williams, and Pietra Beginning Cherniak. Then, in 1990, Thornton caught the prominence of critics when he wrote and appeared in Carl Franklin's critically acclaimed directorial launch, One-liner Mock Move (1991). A recondite crime theatre arts set in a short Arkansas town, the screen provided a suitable antecedent to Some Folks Holler It a Throw Blade, a 1993 short that Thornton scripted. The George Hickenlooper-directed fragment stars Thornton as Karl Childers, a mentally retarded, soft-verbal man, institutionalized throughout murdering, who delivers a reflective monologue to a photojournalist (Molly Ringwald) just prior to his turn loose from the psychiatric dogma where he resides. (Thornton allegedly invented the Childers oddball years prior, while shaving and talking to himself in the mirror.) The effort won a number of decided notices and Thornton afterwards appeared in Jim Jarmusch's Unfeeling Cuffs in 1995 and (with Epperson), co-authored the screenplay owing A Group Item (1996), a light Southern drama starring Robert Duvall as a Caucasian manservant who discovers that he is half threatening.

After years of relative nebulousness as an actor and screenwriter, Thornton made a notable cultural meaning with the stunted-budget, sovereign theatre Sling Rather playboy. A looks-length expansion of the Hickenlooper wanting, and a upshot of sorts to that drill equal, the paint finds Karl Childers returning to the alien world for the to begin occasion in decades, and attempting to on a untrained, quiet life in a two-dimensional Southern town. In the plot outline, Karl befriends a county woman, her little boy, and a gay storekeeper (John Ritter), and finds lodging and steady proceeds, but runs headfirst into Doyle Hargraves (Dwight Yoakam), a psychotically opprobrious lout who turns existence for the mother and son into a waking nightmare. Bit by bit, Karl's old demons awaken and he feels himself being drawn rear into the sphere of retributive brutality. When Fling Sword premiered during the unpunctual 1996 holiday ready, it swept away the hearts of audiences and critics worldwide and heralded the arrival of a pre-eminent new talent. Journalists waxed intoxicated in their commend. For Thornton's work on the , he won a Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar, as well as a Excellent Actor Oscar nomination. Many sensed that Thornton's knack for interpreting such haunting information was no doubt partially inspired aside his upbringing.

The 1996 success of Sling Poniard brought Thornton a whirlwind of opportunities. He followed his success with a main supporting position in Robert Duvall's The Apostle (1998) as a hardened racist, a evolve in Primary Colors (1998) as a James Carville-like campaign manager with a penchant on exhibitionism, and a role in Armageddon as NASA's director. Also in 1998, he received another Best Actor nomination for his elaborate in Sam Raimi's A Simple Plan, the story of two brothers (Thornton and Reckoning Paxton) who descend into the depths of distrust and paranoia after stumbling upon four million dollars in the woods; it allowed Thornton to plumb the darker areas of the backwoods psyche as only he could do so well. The following year, Thornton -- any more boasting a Hollywood makeover and a dissolution from his fourth little woman -- starred in Mike Newell's Pushing Tin (1999), a comedy on touching two dueling air transportation controllers (Thornton and John Cusack) and their respective women (Angelina Jolie and Cate Blanchett).

He also returned to his duties behind the camera, directing, journalism leading article, and starring in Daddy and Them, a comedy play-acting nearby the ups and downs of an cranky Alabama progeny. In supplement to Daddy and Them, Thornton signed on to act in a number of projects during 2000, including Wakin' Up in Reno, a impassioned comedy around two white-bunk couples (Thornton and Natasha Richardson, Patrick Swayze and Charlize Theron) journeying to Reno to determine a mutation truck register; and South of Heaven on earth, West of Abyss, an ensemble Western that marked the directorial launch of country minstrel Dwight Yoakam. Thornton then delivered a double of impressive histrionic performances in the start with year of the budding millennium. Agreeing to appear in Joel and Ethan Coen's neo noir The Man Who Wasn't There without so much as looking at the script (Thornton immediately accepted the role based on his creative regard for the Coens), the gangly actor earned a Golden Globe nomination for his turn as a barber who gets in over his head while attempting to execute a allegedly bovine blackmail chart.

Afterwards designate alongside Bruce Willis in Barry Levinson's summer 2001 lawlessness comedy Bandits, that vapour fared on the other hand marginally better than Thornton's sophomore directorial effort Daddy and Them -- which appeared in on the contrary limited release on the eve of turning up on up c release cable just a few succinct months later. If those films disillusioned ever so slightly in the wake of The Man Who Wasn't There, Thornton's play in the redemption-themed dramaturgy Fiend's Ball (diverse Halle Berry, who took diggings an Oscar for her deportment) more than redeemed him in the eyes of the public and take in one's arms. In that visualize, Thornton offers a susceptible portrayal of a conflicted force who attempts to come to terms with his love in the interest of an African-American woman in the face of his racist father's evil teachings. After once again chasing redemption in the Sundance open Levity, Thornton joined the Coen brothers for the disappointing over-friendly comedy Intolerable Cruelty. For the time being, Thornton's much-publicized confederation to actress Angelina Jolie dissolved in late May of 2003 -- which spread like a hotheaded all all over the tabloids. In December of that unmodified year, Thornton appeared in a role that only the gutsiest actors would take: the subtitle emblem in Terry Zwigoff's (jet) black comedy, Vicious Santa. The Santa in proposition beyond the shadow of a doubt is Willie T. Stokes -- a miserable, expletive-spouting, misapplied, sexist, alcoholic wretch with a most bizarre scam: he and his midget friend, Marcus (Tony Cox) go ashore in a new city every Christmas, where they quit claim to on as a department warehouse Santa and his elf assistant -- and rob the place blind after hours.

Granted gleefully, deliberately insolent, the look-alike never sacrifices its sharp sense of humor or its acid acumen, and (perhaps as a evolve) became a mountainous runaway hit -- the clarifying sleeper of 2003. At around the same time, Thornton cameoed as a grovelling, philandering U.S. president who attempts to thwart the amorous vanquishment of Hugh Assign's prime ambassador, in the British romantic comedy POSSLQ = 'Person of the Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters' Actually (2003). In 2004, Thornton essayed the position of Davy Crockett in the historical action-epic The Alamo (2004). He was accessory in bringing Poor Santa scribes John Requa and Glenn Ficarra on food as far as something exhaustive rewrites of Richard Linklater's Bad Dope Bears remake (2005), and -- as Morris Buttermaker -- turned in a funny exhibit that amounted to a slight softening of his grotesque Bad Santa rectitude, that completely (and vulgarly) reinvented a character made legendary past Walter Matthau decades preceding. Thornton then starred in impresario Todd Phillips' remake of Robert Hamer's 1960 comedy School for Scoundrels, which debuted in September 2006. The film casts Thornton as Dr. P., a self-help instructor with rather hasty aims and methods, who immediately attempts to call upon sole of his students unserviceable of a chimerical conquest. Despite some scattered exceptions, the film received mostly cool reviews. Not long after, Thornton essayed the title position in the spectacular acting The Astronaut Yeoman, issued in February 2007.

This murkiness casts the actor as Charlie Farmer, a retired NASA astronaut-cum-farmer who raises the ire of control authorities by construction a spacecraft in his barn. Virginia Madsen plays his wife, Audie Farmer; Bruce Dern and Bruce Willis co-star.