Billy Bob Thornton’ Once Shared His ‘Monster’s Ball’ Love Scene Was Tough on Him and Angelina Jolie
Angelina Jolie had a lot of questions for ex-husband Billy Bob Thornton after his love scene in Monster’s Ball. Sleeping with his co-star Halle Berry, even in a fictional setting, slightly worried the Mr. and Mrs. Smith star.
Billy Bob Thornton didn’t look back at his time in the spotlight with Angelina Jolie very fondly
Thornton and Jolie garnered a lot of attention at the height of their marriage back in the 2000s. But although Thornton didn’t seem to regret his relationship with Jolie, he wasn’t too thrilled about the media coverage that came with it.
“It was, I mean it was a crazy time,” Thornton told The Hollywood Reporter in a 2014 interview. “I mean from ’95 or so when we were making Sling Blade on through the time Angelina and I split up which was 2003 I suppose, that whole time was quite a whirlwind and that was, you know, an amazing time. And I’ve never been fond of it.”
Thornton felt that some in the media would twist his words about the Tomb Raider star. This made the actor careful about opening up his relationship and his personal life to the public. One example he gave was when rumors spread that Jolie and Thornton owned a dungeon.
“I mean you know we had a basement. Which I had a recording studio in. So it was a recording studio and so when I tell a journalist I stay down in the dungeon all the time, you know, recording music and they don’t hear recording music, they hear dungeon. You know. Because it makes a better story,” he explained.
Billy Bob Thornton once shared his ‘Monster’s Ball’ love scene with Halle Berry was tough on his relationship with Angelina Jolie
As many know, Thornton and Halle Berry had a love scene in the drama Monster’s Ball. The Bad Santa star explained that love scenes could often be hard for any married couple in the movie business. Jolie and Thornton were no exception to this issue. For Thornton, it was a particularly visceral scene because of the themes present in the story.
“It felt so real when we were doing it that [we felt] the heaviness surrounding the circumstances in the story,” Thornton told HuffPost. “I think maybe that’s why it comes across so well on screen, because it was two desperate human beings in this moment alone, and we kind of were alone.”
But the scene in question concerned Jolie a little, who would ask her husband about the take.
“I go away and do a film like Monster’s Ball with a very explicit sex scene with Halle Berry,” Thornton once told The Sun (via Yahoo). “She is one of the most beautiful women in the world and I am talking on the phone to my wife, and she says, ‘What have you been doing today?’ And I say, ‘Oh, I did that sex scene with Halle Berry.’ You are then asked if you actually touch her. I say, ‘I had to – it’s in the scene.’ Other people’s situations are hard, with areas of doubt. But if you are a thousand miles from home on a film set simulating sex with a beautiful woman, it’s even tougher.”
Angelina Jolie felt she didn’t know Billy Bob Thornton at the end of their relationship
Jolie once explained that one of her priorities was making Thornton happy. But as time went on their relationship, the two just drifted further apart. It had eventually gotten to the point where Thornton became a stranger to the Maleficent actor.
“I wanted him to feel good. I believe that’s something that you do. That’s something a wife would do, for … to or for her husband. And, and at the time I meant it. I thought he was amazing. And, now I just feel like I don’t know him. … We’re not friends.” she once said in an interview with Barbara Walters.
However, she didn’t regret marrying Thornton at all, seeing it as a learning experience.
“I think you make mistakes, and you learn from then, and if you become a better person from those lessons learned, then that’s good,” Jolie said.
