Billy Bob Thornton
I never wanted to write a book, and people have asked me for years to do it.Collection: Book
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Facts
I don't know how to type so I handwrite everything.Collection: Type
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.Collection: Years
I think people can live a religious life and yet believe in things maybe outside the box a little bit.Collection: Religious
A lot of kids, when they go to church, they don't really pay much attention to what they're saying or whatever.Collection: Kids
When you weigh 135 pounds and you're telling people who are 6'4" and 250 pounds to get out of your way, how do you do that? Well, a lot of that is in the eyes.Collection: Eye
I don't like movies that are shot on green screen much, you know. I mean, I know that's the thing to do, and I know that it's getting. I'll put it this way; David Lean would probably kill himself, you know, again if he knew that people were watching Lawrence of Arabia on a telephone.Collection: Mean
The independent film business is pretty much gone. Now you can do it in a format where you actually get to develop a character over a period of time.Collection: Independent
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.Collection: Thinking
I tend to like to move on. I don't sit around and dwell on things much.Collection: Moving
My mom is such a big supporter of mine. She still is, and always was. So I got the sort of encouragement from that side of the family.Collection: Mom
I grew up in Arkansas and that's the law. My dad was a high school basketball coach, so I was raised as a coach's son and I was a baseball player back in Arkansas, and I lived in Texas, too, so I was just surrounded by sports. So that's what I was going to do: Pitch for the St Louis Cardinals. I had no idea I was going to be an actor. So I got my collar bone broken in the Kansas City Royals training camp. And once I got hurt I started doing other things for a while.Collection: Basketball
People think you have to be tortured or miserable to write, but I'm finding that I get inspired a lot more these days before I'm happy.Collection: Writing
If you looked in magazines ... you never see me in those out-on-the-town pages. I'm either at home playing with the kids or I'm working.Collection: Home
Usually with film writing I start with characters, and set about writing their story.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Years
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.Collection: Teenager
People a lot of times say that you know it must be hard to direct yourself. That's a myth. It's easier to direct yourself. There's no middle man, you know.Collection: Men
They were on the set of Bad Santa, but I tried to keep the headphones away from them. My kids have seen Sling Blade, Armageddon, Bandits and Friday Night Lights. They have not seen Monster's Ball and nor will they ever. Even when they are 60. I will leave it in my will.Collection: Friday
Basically there are no stars anymore. The audience is the star.Collection: Stars
Every character I play is me, always has been.Collection: Character
You can't knock a place where you realized your dreams.Collection: Dream
Usually when I'm writing, I kind of know what it is before I start writing and I write stream of consciousness style.Collection: Writing
Playing normal-looking characters really intimidatesme. I got into acting to play anyone but me.Collection: Character
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.Collection: Stars
I'm an actor. I'm not a performer. I'm not like a song and dance guy who can take a cane and a hat and do it. I would just you know. That's why I never did commercials.Collection: Song
If Michelle Pfeiffer gave Mel Gibson a vial of blood to wear around his neck in a movie you'd think it was terribly romantic, everyone would cry and they'd win awards. But in real life if someone does that they'd be considered weird.Collection: Movie
I've really dreamed of doing television. All of us do television, coming up. But when I was coming up, television was a black hole for actors. Now, television has a certain cache. Now everybody wants to be on TV because they're doing adult dramas. If you're an actor, it's like, "Well, get me on television," because it's the only place you can do it and also make a living at it. If my kids need shoes, I better do a TV show because I damn sure don't make any money with independent films.Collection: Drama
Directing is a big responsibility to take on. I think I'm only good at doing things I know very well. I don't direct movies because I get offered the new vampire movie or science fiction movie. I don't get offered those, anyway, but if I did, I would just tell 'em, "Look, I'm the wrong guy." I only do things about people and situations, and I do the ones that I think I'm the best guy for the job on, which is usually something I generate myself.Collection: Jobs
These days and times you can't do eclectic records. In the '60s you could, but not anymore.Collection: Records
I can't sit through plays and musical theatre. I just want to run up onstage and mess up their hair and turn over the furniture.Collection: Running
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.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: Drama
I'm more influenced by novelists than I am by filmmakers.Collection: Novelists
I'm as highly insecure as a human can be.Collection: Insecure
Nowadays the movies that people are going to see in the theaters are the big-event movies, like Spider-Man or something, or they're 25-year-old models who are vampires, or they're very broad comedies, or they're standard action movies. So if you're going to work for a studio and do a movie for the budget that the movie needs, those are the kinds of movies you'll be in.Collection: Men
These days movies are cut very quickly and sort of fragmented and I tend to do slower moving stories where people develop relationships with people. I think I'd probably do a lot better if I lived in Europe - I think it's more of a European sensibility somehow.Collection: Moving
They always say 'Is there going to be a sequel to Bad Santa?' and you know, I mean, a long time ago they would talk about, you know, we're going to do a sequel to that but it was never serious. And they said 'Would you do it?' and I said out of all the movies I've done, that was a lot of fun, and maybe I would do a sequel if it ever came up and it made sense, but I said I don't think that's ever going to happen.Collection: Fun
I think I fully commit myself to any role to the extent to which I can. In other words there's some roles that maybe it's just not there, in other words on the page. You know, I mean your job is you need to play the governor and that's what you do. I mean I'm not going to stay up all night if I'm playing a functional role. And I've played a couple of functional roles. And so I'm not going to do anything other, look he's a functional guy. He says hey mister, you forgot your hat.Collection: Jobs
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.Collection: Careers
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.Collection: Years
I don't see anything wrong with a cell phone. That's great. You have a flat tire in the middle of the night; it works better than digging in your pocket for a quarter and looking for a payphone eight miles down the road.Collection: Night
I'm not a TV junkie outside of sports and history really and stuff like that.Collection: Sports
My songs aren't built around choruses or hooks or anything like that. That's kind of how I write screenplays too.Collection: Song
I know that I loved music before I loved movies, simply because I didn't see movies as a kid.Collection: Kids
We didn't have a movie theatre until I was about nine, so I just didn't see them. But, once I got into movies I loved them.Collection: Theatre
As most characters are that I play, there's a lot of me in it, anyway.Collection: Character