Billy Bob Thornton became famous in Sling Blade

Musician turned actor-director-writer, Billy Bob Thornton scored his first movie success with Sling Blade (1996), which proved to be more than a fluke hit for a rural talent who fought his way to the top from humble beginnings in the Ozarks. He was born in Hot Springs, Arkansas, on August 4, 1955, and began his career performing in a band called Tres Hombres. In 1981, he moved to Los Angeles where he began to take acting classes in hopes of finding a career in film. He found bit parts in movies and television series but was barely able to survive until he was cast in the Fox Television show The Outsiders.

The titles of some of Billy Bob Thornton's early films indicate the nature of their contents: Hunter's Blood (1987), One False Move (1991), Trouble Bound (1992), and Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1992). In 1993, he made a short entitled Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade, which was an earlier version of 1996's Sling Blade. Between 1993 and 1996, he got better roles in several films: the cult western Tombstone (1993), for example, On Deadly Ground (1994, with Steven Seagal), and Indecent Proposal (1992, with ROBERT REDFORD).

However, it was the Sling Blade role of Karl Childers, a mentally handicapped killer with his own moral code, that established Billy Bob Thornton in Hollywood. The story was utterly original, concerning the friendship between the killer, just released from a mental hospital, and a young boy, whose mother's boyfriend, Dwight Yoakam, is an abusive bully.

Billy Bob Thornton worked as an actor for another independent actor-director, ROBERT DUVALL, whom he considered his "acting mentor," in The Apostle (1997). He played a troublemaker intent upon bulldozing the Duvall character. That same year, he appeared in three other independent films, Homegrown, A Gun, a Car, a Blonde, and OLIVER STONE's UTurn. He earned three major roles in 1998, in Armageddon, Primary Colors, and, most notably, A Simple Plan, in which he played Bill Paxton's mentally challenged brother.

The plan, which is only ironically "simple," to steal and hide $4 million from a wrecked plane, goes wrong because of greed and stupidity. Billy Bob Thornton won the Best Supporting Actor award from various film critics circles, and was nominated for both a Golden Globe and an Oscar. Billy Bob Thornton portrayed the NASA director in Armageddon, the top-grossing film of 1998, and in Primary Colors, he nailed the James Carville role in that Bill Clinton allegory.

Mike Newell cast Billy Bob Thornton with Angelina Jolie in Pushing Tin (1999), a melodrama about Russell Bell, a Native American air-traffic controller who is a loose cannon. In 2000, he directed Matt Damon and Penelope Cruz in All the Pretty Horses, adapted from Cormac McCarthy's novel, but the film did not come close to recovering its production costs.

Billy Bob Thornton's next major acting role was costarring with BRUCE WILLIS in Bandits (2002), directed by BARRY LEVINSON, a comic caper movie that grossed nearly $42 million and earned Billy Bob Thornton a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in a Comedy. That same year, he also won a Golden Globe nomination as Best Actor in a Drama, for his performance in the COEN BROTHERS productions, The Man Who Wasn't There. His most memorable role beyond Sling Blade was as a prison guard in charge of executions in Monster's Ball (2001).

In the film, he plays a cold, unfeeling father who is responsible for the death of his son, who botches an execution. Grief-stricken, he later gives comfort to single mother HALLE BERRY after her son is hit and killed by a car. (Ironically, it was his prison detail that had executed her husband.) Then, surprisingly, they become involved in a torrid romance. Halle Berry won the Best Actress ACADEMY AWARD for her performance.

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Billy Bob Thornton became famous in Sling Blade

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