Angelina: An Unauthorized Biography (24 page)

So who was this rather unlikely object of desire for the talented and beautiful? Born on August 4, 1955, in Hot Springs, Arkansas, to a psychic mother and a basketball coach and history teacher father, Billy Bob had an upbringing that was genuinely hardscrabble, living in a shack without electricity or running water and often eating the game he caught in the woods. The only real choice he ever got was which switch his father would beat him with at night in his impotent rage at their financial plight.

As a teenager, Billy Bob formed his own rock band; later he would always consider himself a musician first, an actor second. He was the star pitcher on his school baseball team—he was good enough to win a tryout for the Kansas City Royals—but, like Angelina, he always thought himself an outsider, his extreme poverty setting him apart. “I was the bucktooth hillbilly who lived in the middle of nowhere,” he recalled. In 1973, when Billy Bob was eighteen, his father died of lung cancer. Despite his father’s past cruelties, Billy Bob was constantly at his bedside in his waning months, nursing him and reading to him. This quasi-religious experience taught him the transformative power of forgiveness, a quality that marked him as a man and informed his artistic journey. It would in time distinguish him from Angelina.

After his father’s death Billy got into drink and drugs, dropping out of college, where he studied psychology, after a couple of semesters. Eventually he moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career as an actor and a musician, playing drums and singing with the South African band Jack Hammer. With few acting parts for someone with his background or thick Southern accent, he took on a variety of menial jobs to scrape together a living. Perhaps the lowest point was when he was admitted to the hospital with myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart.

A chance conversation with the legendary Billy Wilder at a film industry Christmas party where he was working as a waiter transformed his life. When Wilder suggested that he focus on writing if he wanted to find a niche in Hollywood, Thornton teamed up with an old friend, novelist Tom Epperson, to write scripts. After an assortment of small roles in TV and films, he brought his most enduring creation, the mentally handicapped but astutely simple killer Karl Childers, to the screen in
Sling Blade
. He was a character who for years had haunted Billy Bob, who first wrote a stage play about the simple yet morally complex Childers.

With
Sling Blade,
the “hillbilly” outsider was suddenly very much an insider, winning an Academy Award for Adapted Screenplay for the 1996 tour de force. But the tics and twitches Billy grew up with remained, his genuine talent often overshadowed by ribald discussions of his many idiosyncrasies, including an obsessive-compulsive disorder that left him with a morbid fear of flying and a hatred of harpsichords, silverware, and antiques, particularly French furniture. Born into poverty, he was literally terrified of putting a silver spoon in his mouth.

His romantic life was as complex as his many quirks. Though married and divorced four times, he was living with a member of Hollywood royalty, Laura Dern, when director Mike Newell cast the actor with a flying phobia as the Zen-like air-traffic controller Russell Bell. The daughter of well-respected and Oscar-nominated actors Bruce Dern and Diane Ladd, Laura Dern had first met Thornton during the filming of the celebrity-studded
Ellen
show in April 1997, when the star, Ellen DeGeneres, publicly outed herself as a lesbian.

At the time, Billy Bob was in the midst of an acrimonious divorce from his fourth wife, Pietra, who had angered him by claiming in court that he had physically abused her—an allegation he denied—and then, as a final
insult, posed nude for
Playboy,
declaring that the spread was her version of an Oscar. For an old-fashioned Southern gentleman, polite but essentially chauvinistic, this was unacceptable behavior.

As was his wont, he quickly moved on, soon sharing the home Laura Dern was renting from comedian Dudley Moore. Even though it was a whirlwind romance, the omens seemed good, especially since Laura’s mother, who fancied herself a sage and a psychic, had earlier read the runes and forecast her daughter’s love match with this affable good old boy. Her prediction reinforced their feelings that they were indeed soul mates, destined to share the rest of their lives together.

Billy Bob was immediately welcomed into the bosom of the Dern family. Down-to-earth but with an offbeat sense of humor, he meshed well with Laura’s father, Bruce, who was known for his funny if far-fetched stories, his love of gambling, and his life as a bon vivant. “Billy and Laura were stone cold in love,” noted a close associate speaking on the condition of anonymity. “In the beginning it was Billy who made the running. Within a matter of weeks he convinced her that they should get married.” It was such a wild and passionate affair that they took compromising pictures of each other, which despite their fame they had developed locally and kept under lock and key for their future perusal. “Theirs was a possessive and intense love,” noted a friend from that time.

As was her pattern, Laura set about shaping herself to the new man in her life. When she was engaged to the lanky, urbane Jeff Goldblum, she neatly dovetailed into his lifestyle: driving a BMW, listening to jazz, collecting modern art, and eating and drinking only the finest foods and wines. After Billy breezed into her life, all that changed. When he planted a Confederate flag in the master bedroom, it was a cue for Laura to cast out her designer duds and her collection of French antiques and silverware, and buy herself a new wardrobe of checked shirts and cowboy boots. Out, too, went the BMW, and in came a Volvo station wagon to accommodate Billy Bob’s boys from his marriage to Pietra, William and Harry.

Laura threw out her Chet Baker and Charlie Parker in favor of what Billy called “shit-kicking music” by the likes of Buck Owens, Dwight Yoakam (with whom he formed the film production company Cross River), and the bearded rock wizards ZZ Top. Indeed, when the band came to visit one day, their stretch limo was so long it couldn’t get in the drive of
Laura and Billy Bob’s Coldwater Canyon home. There were other changes. Laura, whose eyesight had been affected after she was bitten by a poisonous insect as a child, was careful with her diet and ensured that Billy started to look after himself, seeing to it that he consumed organic vegetables, tofu, and lots of herbal drinks. For good measure she quietly removed all the hard liquor in the house. The results were plain to see in his public appearances. Under Laura’s care her boyfriend was looking healthier and fitter than he had in years.

He bought a $3.2 million home in Mandeville Canyon, near to luminaries such as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tom Hanks, and Steven Spielberg; and the couple’s remodeling plans, which included a nursery, were well under way by the time Billy arrived in Toronto. His life seemed settled—until that encounter in the elevator.

Fresh from filming the thriller
A Simple Plan
in Minnesota, he knew little about Angie before taking the gig as her screen husband. It was only when a friend pointed out that she was phenomenal in
Gia
that he watched the movie—and was suitably impressed. Even though their mutual agent, Geyer Kosinski, had once told Billy Bob that he and Angie would get along (as he also had told Angie and Leonardo DiCaprio), they had never met before. Angie later recalled that for some unknown reason she had deliberately avoided him at industry events in Hollywood.

Certainly if Laura had been concerned about a rival, it would not have been Angie but Billy Bob’s assistant, Odessa Whitmire, a pretty blonde from North Carolina who worshipped her boss. She would sit in her pajamas chatting with him late into the night when he stayed at the Sunset Marquis hotel, his rock-and-roll home away from home, where he worked on lyrics and songs for his debut album,
Private Radio
. But Laura, it seems, trusted her man. “If Laura was worried about Odessa, she never showed it,” notes an associate.

If anything, it was Angie’s agitated state of mind rather than her sexual allure that perturbed Laura. Like many others, she was aware of rumors circulating around Hollywood about Angie’s behavior on the set of
Hell’s Kitchen
in New York. During the filming of
Pushing Tin,
she and Billy Bob shared what director Mike Newell described as “a low-key friendship.” The English auteur was impressed by Angie’s focus and offbeat talent: “She is someone who would have fit in during Paris in the 1920s,” he recalled.
“Very, very unordinary.” The only time Billy Bob’s and Angie’s behavior raised eyebrows was at the end of filming, in late April 1998, when they visited Daemon Rowanchilde’s tattoo boutique, Urban Primitive, in downtown Toronto. Billy Bob had a couple of names covered up on his hip and arm with a new energy wave design, while Angie also received energy waves just below her navel. It was an intimate moment, physically and emotionally. Angie has not only linked tattoos with positive events in her life but has also confessed that she finds the physical act of tattooing sexually arousing, saying in particular that the heavy rattle of the needle turns her on. “It gives her a sexual buzz,” notes a fellow aficionado. The effect is similar to that of cutting. When her skin was pierced she would enjoy an endorphin rush and feel spaced out, calm after the storm of emotions swirling inside her.

From the tattoo shop, they headed over to the Skydome and watched the Rolling Stones in concert, unaware of yet another scheme by the besotted Mick Jagger. Previously Jagger had invited Angie along to watch the show and party with him afterward. The way he had manipulated Jonny Lee Miller still fresh in her mind, she had graciously declined, saying that she had a busy filming schedule. He was not to be denied. Knowing Billy Bob of old, Jagger called him up and invited the entire cast and crew to the concert. Now Angie was obliged to go. At the time, Mick didn’t know about Billy Bob and Angie, and vice versa. Before the concert, Jagger made sure he knew exactly where Angie was sitting. During a break, when he ceded the stage to Keith Richards and the others, a security man came up to Angie. “Mick Jagger would like you to go backstage and meet him,” the guard intoned before leading her through the throng to where Jagger was waiting. Curiously, Jagger gave her a cashmere sweater, and they made out until he had to go back onstage, their public canoodling watched with openmouthed astonishment by actress Rebecca Broussard, then the partner of Hollywood legend Jack Nicholson. The following day Broussard called Marche and told her excitedly: “You’ll never guess who is in love with Angie—
Mick Jagger.
” Marche smiled at the news, knowing already how far and how fast the man she had idolized for three decades had fallen for her daughter.

After the concert, Billy Bob, Angie, John Cusack, and other cast members partied with the band, Billy Bob and Mick Jagger still completely in
the dark about each other—until his go-between, Marcheline, told Jagger about Billy Bob soon after.

In this heavyweight contest, Jonny Lee Miller was back in the ring as well. The week before the Stones concert, Angie had flown to London to attend the BAFTA Awards with her husband, and they had watched their friend Robert Carlyle win Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for his performance as a male stripper in the classic British comedy
The Full Monty.
The estranged couple reunited again to attend a friend’s wedding in May, but the distance between them was obvious. Jonny was in tears, wailing to fellow guests that he hoped he and Angie could still be friends. “Initially he charmed her with his English accent, but she became really strong and ate him alive,” observed a friend who watched the breakup. Actually, the knockout blow was delivered the moment he heard that Angie had gone for a tattoo with another man.

As for Billy Bob Thornton, he was very low-key in his assessment of Angie when he returned from filming in Toronto. He had more plaudits for John Cusack than for his screen wife, referring to her often as “just a kid.” In public he considered himself “her mentor,” not daring to think that this exotic creature had fallen for his offbeat charm. It was entirely typical of the man. “He was unsure of himself,” notes a former girlfriend. “At that time he wasn’t the big stud he likes to think he is now.” His insecurity was evident when Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein visited him at his Coldwater Canyon home. As Billy waited for the arrival of the Miramax boss, he paced up and down the driveway muttering to himself: “I’m a ditch digger. I’m not a director, I’m not an actor, I’m a ditch digger. I’m not worthy. I’m not worthy.” When Weinstein carelessly flicked ash from his expensive cigar over Thornton’s $25,000 rug, he never complained.

Angie returned to Hollywood uncharacteristically kittenish in her admiration for her latest costar. She had always wanted to be with an artist, a man who could do more than act; now she had fallen for a real live one. Still, neither felt entirely free to pursue their initial animal attraction: Billy Bob was engaged, and Angie was technically still married and was also stepping out with Tim Hutton, who accompanied her and a kilted Robert Carlyle to a wedding in New York in June.

Her art now imitating her life, Angie’s latest movie,
Playing by Heart,
appropriately dealt with the convoluted and interconnected love lives of
various couples in Los Angeles. “Talking about love is like dancing about architecture. But it ain’t stopped me from trying,” says Angie’s character, Joan, a sassy but irredeemably romantic gold-trousered nightclubber. The optimist in Joan did not speak to Angie; the actor managed to connect to her only by conjuring childhood memories of “making people laugh and wearing glitter underwear.” Angie observed, “I’ve always had a tough time focusing on love or asking for love or asking someone to hold me.”

Filmed in her hometown during the summer of 1998, it was an ensemble movie with a high-octane cast including Sean Connery, Gena Rowlands, Gillian Anderson, and Angie’s screen love interest, Ryan Phillippe. In a strange twist of fate,
Playing by Heart
was her fallback movie after
Pushing Tin.
She had taken time off during filming in Toronto to screen-test for the part of Marla Singer in David Fincher’s
Fight Club,
a story of violence and strange romance that starred Ed Norton and Brad Pitt. At the time, Brad was furiously fending off rumors about a liaison with Jennifer Aniston after he and the
Friends
star had gone on a blind date organized by their respective agents. The role eventually went to English actress Helena Bonham Carter.