Top 90 Billy Bob Thornton Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 2 of 2

51. “I think maybe I was instrumental in taking the stereotype out of the Southern actor is some ways. I would hope my legacy would be as a serious actor who told the truth and did parts based on the quality of part and not necessarily the money.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

52. “If you’re 25 years old dressed up like Superman at a comic book convention, that’s great. If you’re 78 and you’re doing it, something’s wrong.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

53. “When I saw that show Lost I learned something. Other than one sort of big dude if you’re in an airplane crash only models survive. So you know sit next to somebody pretty, but anyhow.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

54. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

55. “My dad didn’t hug me every day and say he loved me and anything like that.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

56. “When I was a teenager, I read the bible cover-to-cover, and I found the Old Testament, it’s a pretty bloody history book.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

57. “I don’t know how to type so I handwrite everything.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

58. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

59. “The thing about a motion picture is that look of film on a big screen takes you into a magical.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

60. “If you want anybody to have a different voice, you really have to visualize and hear the voices of all these people. Sometimes when I write with specific actors in mind, it helps.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

61. “I’m not much of a drinker, so I’m going to eat seven pounds of pork.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

62. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

63. “Kids won’t watch older movies – they want to see what’s hip right now.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

64. “Anytime you get a chance to play some extreme character, in any direction, it’s always a great blessing.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

65. “I figured I would have to tell someone to kiss my ass before it was all over, and I have – twice.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

66. “I always say if you’re going to do a movie about Charles de Gaulle get a Frenchman, you know. I’m not French. And yeah, sure I could get with a dialect coach and work for six months trying to talk like a Frenchman. But there’s some French actors. Just get one of them, you know.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

67. “I always have an idea before we even start the movie because if you hire the wrong person, within a couple of days you’re going to know that and you’re going to be really panicked.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

68. “Usually when you’re playing a character, you think a lot about their backstory.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

69. “I’m more influenced by novelists than I am by filmmakers.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

70. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

71. “Just the other day, my assistant was on the line with Calvin Klein. Golly, I usually shop at Sears.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

72. “The only times you’ll see me in terms of the movie business is when I have to go to the premieres of my own movies. I don’t go to see ones that aren’t mine because I don’t even like going to mine.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

73. “If you love somebody let them know every day.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

74. “Playing normal-looking characters really intimidatesme. I got into acting to play anyone but me.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

75. “Every couple I know has side-by-side grave plots, but when we do it we’re the biggest weirdos on the block.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

76. “When I was growing up, when I was 11 years old I was listening to The Mothers of Invention. You know, I mean I was a Frank Zappa fan in Arkansas.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

77. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

78. “I’m not really a full-time director, I just like to direct the things that I write because I think I’m going to know it better than someone else.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

79. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

80. “I never wanted to write a book, and people have asked me for years to do it.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

81. “I mean the most important thing you can have as an actor, writer, director, or whatever you are, poet or whatever it is, is life experience. Life experience doesn’t mean you have to live 50 years to have it. I mean you know a lot of people have huge life experience by the time they’re in college.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

82. “I’ll always consider myself a Southerner. A lot of people put California down, but my dreams were realized there.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

83. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

84. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

85. “After you’ve done 60-something movies, you’re always looking for something different.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

86. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

87. “I’m as highly insecure as a human can be.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

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

— Billy Bob Thornton

89. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

90. “If you’ve written it you know exactly; whoever you’re playing if you’ve written it you already know it. As a matter of fact, you’ve already made the movie if you wrote it. You’ve made it in your head.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

91. “I actually am a phobic twitchy sort of nervous guy.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

92. “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.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

93. “All the actors I’ve worked with as a director over the years I really love and I thought they were all right for the part.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

94. “Reality shows are usually created by people doing and saying stupid things.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

95. “The movies I’ve made about the South, they were my experience and it’s something that I know.”

— Billy Bob Thornton

96. “I’ve danced one time in my life. It was the most mortifying experience I ever had.”

— Billy Bob Thornton