4 Rumors About Billy Bob Thornton We Can't Ignore

Having starred in critically acclaimed films such as "Sling Blade" and "Monster's Ball," Billy Bob Thornton has been a mainstay in Hollywood for decades. His TV role as the protagonist of the Paramount+ series "Landman" proves he's still very much around, even if we don't hear much from Thornton. He may be lying low these days, but that doesn't mean that was always the case. Thornton's life in the spotlight has been riddled with head-turning rumors that have put his reputation to the test.

Thornton's love life has been the subject of intense speculation, particularly around his high-profile relationship with Angelina Jolie. He even became embroiled in the public trial between Johnny Depp and Amber Heard, much to his chagrin. But Thornton has been with his wife, Connie Angland, since his split from Jolie, after a string of short-lived marriages. This newfound stability has quieted down the rumors considerably, allowing him to enjoy a private life away from the limelight.

That's exactly what he wanted. In fact, he doesn't even consider himself a celebrity at all. "I'm not really much of a part of Hollywood, as you say. I'm at home with the family, or I'm in a recording studio or on the road or making this," he told People in June 2025. "Those are the things I do, and I just kind of mind my own business." That may be true today, but Thornton has certainly given the public a lot to talk about throughout his career.

The media frenzy sparked by Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton's relationship in 2000 made us nearly forget that he had been with Laura Dern right up until then. Or even during. In September 2000, Dern claimed that she was still very much engaged to and living with Thornton when he eloped with Jolie just four months earlier. "I left our home to work on a movie, and while I was away, my boyfriend got married, and I've never heard from him again," she told Talk magazine (via ABC News).

Dern felt completely blindsided by the end of her three-year relationship. "It's like a sudden death. For no one has there been any closure or clarity," the "Wild at Heart" actor shared. While the timeline of what happened is fuzzy, Thornton has acknowledged that he left Dern because he fell in love with Jolie, whom he met on the "Pushing Tin" set in 1999. "Others may say that you left our girl and married someone else," he told The Guardian in 2001. "But it made me happy and somebody else happy. I'm sorry it caused pain."

They say time heals all wounds, but that proved wrong for Dern and Thornton. At least that's what their encounter at the 2017 Golden Globes suggested. "Never in my life have I witnessed something as awkward as Laura Dern dodging the same oxygen space as Billy Bob," an X user commented. Whatever it is that happened, it seems certain that Jolie came between Thornton and Dern.

In 2001, Billy Bob Thornton and Halle Berry costarred in "Monster's Ball," the film for which she made history as the first Black woman to win an Oscar for best actress. The movie's intensely steamy sex scene led to widespread speculation that Thornton and Berry were actually doing the deed as cameras rolled. But the "Catwoman" actor denied the rumors. "There's an urban legend that we really were f***ing. I've heard it, and it's just not true," she said on the "Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard" podcast in 2024.

Berry emphasized that Thornton was married to Angelina Jolie at the time, a fact that would have kept her from engaging with her costar in any way other than professionally. "I know Angie, and she ain't signing off on that s***. ... I'm a girls girl. I'll do a lot of things, but I'm not gonna sleep with your man," she said. Years before that, Thornton had already dispelled the same myth about the explicit sex scene.

Thornton assured that the powerful scene is a testament to their acting chops. "We're actors. We do the job. We do the job that we're required to do, and we were both very professional about it," he said on "Sway in the Morning" in 2012. But he inserted a joke that hinted at how he really felt about his former costar. "It's not like you can't dream," he laughed.

With so many disturbing accusations flung in all directions during the Johnny Depp vs. Amber Heard defamation trial, it is hard to remember everything that went down. But amid the craziness, Heard testified that one of Depp's alleged rage fits from March 2015 was because he believed she had cheated on him with Billy Bob Thornton while filming the 2018 movie "London Fields." According to TMZ, she said Depp, under the influence of alcohol and ecstasy, accidentally cut off the tip of his finger after breaking bottles and windows, then dipped the mangled limb in paint to write "Billy Bob" and "Easy Amber" on a mirror.

Depp, on the other hand, claimed he hurt his finger after Heard threw a bottle at him. Either way, she denied the affair. "Amber never cheated on Johnny with Billy Bob," a source told E! News. Thornton himself addressed the rumored affair. "[It is] completely false," he told TMZ in August 2016. He went so far as to argue that he didn't even develop a friendship with Heard when they worked together, preferring to hang out with other members of the crew. The only time he hung out with Heard was during a cast dinner, he added.

Thornton felt compelled to address the situation because he had secretly married Connie Angland, his sixth wife, in October 2014, just months before the scandal broke out. He privately explained to his wife that the rumor was just Depp's paranoia, but he wanted to come forward publicly.

Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie's eccentricities dominated headlines in the early aughts, with a great deal of attention given to their infamous matching blood necklaces (seen above). Proving the media's — and the public's — obsession with their bloody display of affection is the fact that Thornton still had to explain their gesture decades later. "We each had a little locket, literally with a drop of blood in them. That's a romantic little idea, and that's all that was," he told Rolling Stone in November 2025, 23 years after their split.

In 2014, Thornton had already downplayed the notion that he and Jolie walked around with actual blood from each other. "You know those lockets you buy that are clear and you put a picture of your grannie in it or something like that and wear it around your neck? That's what it was," he told students of Loyola Marymount University's School of Film & Television during an event (via E! News). But instead of putting pictures in them, they smeared a single drop of blood inside.

It was their way to carry the other with them when they were both busy filming "Tomb Raider" and "Monster's Ball," leaving little time to see each other. "From that we were wearing quart jars of blood around our necks," he laughed. While he was generally annoyed by the narrative, he sometimes embraced it. "Everybody thinks I'm a weirdo. I have all these reputations: I'm a blood-sucking vampire. I live in a dungeon," he said in a 2005 interview with Esquire.