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Billy Bob Thornton is an Out of this World Father
By Matt Stringer

“I’m having a hard time being away from her,” Billy Bob Thornton said about his nearly 2-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Bella. “The most I’ve been away is a couple days.”

His girlfriend, Connie Angland, told Bella that “daddy is working and on an airplane” and took her to Monterey, Calif. where Connie’s parents live while Billy Bob was in Philadelphia on a press tour.

“They went to the aquarium and she fell in love with the jellyfish, so now that’s all she’s talking about. That way she thinks she left me and I’m the guy back at home,” Thornton said, beaming with joy as he described his daughter.

That’s quite a contrast to the image of Billy Bob people receive on entertainment shows, gossip magazines, and other media which sensationalized the whole blood vial incident.

“Supposedly, I wore this vial of blood around my neck,” says Billy Bob, “that just never happened. It was a little tiny locket…I poked my finger into it. According to the papers I had a mayonnaise jar full of blood.”

Of course, like all people, Billy Bob does have his idiosyncrasies, like antique furniture. “In Europe, some people might like to go to a restaurant that’s decorated like an old Scottish castle, not me,” Billy Bob said. “I don’t want anything moldy or dusty near my grub. It’s not just the furniture; it’s the whole vibe.”

But he counters that with this: “The biggest misperception is me being this crazy eccentric. I’m kinda regular. I definitely have my quirks there’s no question about that. There’s been a lot of exaggeration. If a carpenter or a plumber has eccentricities, nobody cares. A lot of it gets over blown.”

Billy Bob is now comfortably back home with his daughter, most likely watching the Teletubbies, which Bella loves. It’s the perfect life for the self-described homebody whose marriage with Angelina Jolie soured after the two realized that they were on separate paths: he wanted to stay home; she wanted to be a humanitarian.

Billy Bob was in Philadelphia promoting his new movie that is in theatres now, The Astronaut Farmer. And since you won’t be seeing him in any old European castles, you might want to check him out in this film that’s perfect for families with kids who love to gaze up at the sky—or for a  family that wants a good old-fashioned film that will have you shedding a couple of tears at some spots.

He plays Charles Farmer in the movie, an astronaut who had to give up his dream of flying off into space on a shuttle to be back at home with his family. Billy Bob said that some of his more recent projects didn’t really sit well with him.

“I wasn’t sure about doing the movie the School for Scoundrels. I wasn’t sure about doing the sort of slick business guy whose sort of hoodwinking people. I could play Bad Santa because at the end of the day that guy has a heart, but to play a part where your job is to be cold to the bitter end, that’s kind of hard,” he said.

The movie was directed and written by the Polish brothers, Mark and Michael, who have produced a series of independent films about America—Twin Falls, Idaho; Jackpot; and Northfork—before this project. Those films don’t fall into the realm of family entertainment, though, so this particular movie was embarking on something new.

But, nevertheless, this movie is for families and was made by two brothers who based Billy Bob’s character in large part on their father. “Our father has the same characteristics. We were like the little girls in the rocket. He was always explaining to us mechanical things, tools,” Mark said.

Michael added that his father always emphasized that “giving up wasn’t an option. Hard work was never going to kill you. It was a way of living; it was the way we were taught. That’s what his thing was. That’s what helped us be good filmmakers. There’s a lot of rejection, but with hard work you can prevail.”

And the movie itself is about that perseverance where the rocket can be seen as a metaphor for dreams: things you shouldn’t give up on. And the real touching part about The Astronaut Farmer is it just isn’t one father’s dream about building a rocket in his backyard like some crazy haired scientist—the whole family in the movie plays a part in helping him build the rocket, supporting him along the way, even when he doesn’t support himself anymore.

The inspiration for the movie too comes from some films the Polish brothers watched in the past like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. “When we were 11, E.T. was a little plastic dude woddling into the kitchen,” Mark said. “It’s a huge part of our imagination. To me those were family films. These are the films that we hope to give to 11 year olds.”

Imagination and reality don’t always mix unless you’re writing a fairy tale, which this is not, so the process of making the film plausible required some know how—and the Polish brothers are quite lucky that some of the information on building a rocket ship is public.

“Everything now is declassified, so you can get it all,” Michael said. “First it was what vessel we wanted to use. I was really awestruck by the Mercury-Atlas. That just fascinated me.”

Michael explained that there are junkyards full of old parts for rockets so it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that a person could build their own version of one, if they had the technical know-how.

The Mercury-Atlas, which is a ballistic missile, was the rocket that took John Glenn into orbit. “They were just put on the top of these missiles and shot up. So we got the actual blueprints they used for the construction of the Mercury,” Michael said.

Their next problem to solve was to find their John Glenn, their everyday man who can also shoot into space. Billy Bob was that man. Billy Bob is Charles Farmer.

“He was the one actor that embodied the two characteristics that we needed: the farmer and the astronaut,” Michael said. “He can carry the guy who works the land. But then you believe he’s the John Glenn type throw back.”

Mark added that he got “flashbacks of our uncles on our ranch that we had in Montana” when they were shooting the film.

Billy Bob didn’t hesitate in taking the role. “What attracted me to it is the fact that I also wanted to do a Jimmy Stewart like movie like Mr. Stewart Goes to Washington,” Billy Bob said. “And since I’ve done two or three cynical comedies recently I figured I had the box set on those. He’s the kind of guy you would see in those classic stories, like some of the movies of the 40s and 50s.”

Billy Bob isn’t going away anytime soon, and you might just see him making another classic like Sling Blade, but don’t count on it. “It’s hard to get me to sit down and write a screenplay. I really want to write another one. I’ve written probably 22, 23 over the years,” Billy Bob said.

Matt Stringer is the editor of Curious Parents.