Billy Bob Thornton is once again setting the record straight about a long-standing misconception from his relationship with Angelina Jolie.
During a conversation with Rolling Stone senior editor Andy Greene, Thornton revisited their two-year marriage and clarified that the two never carried vials of each other’s blood. Instead, they wore tiny lockets holding a single drop.
“We each had a little locket, literally with a drop of blood in them,” he explained. “That’s a romantic little idea, and that’s all that was. But by the time it’s over, we’re vampires. We live in a dungeon, we drink each other’s blood, and this kind of stuff.”
Thornton also attempted to clear this up back in 2014 while speaking to students at Loyola Marymount University’s School of Film & Television.
“[A] vial of blood is very simple. Angie came home one day with a kit she bought,” he said, as transcribed by E! News. “You know those lockets you buy that are clear and you put a picture of your grannie in it…? That’s what it was.”
He added that their demanding filming schedules kept them apart for long stretches — sometimes two weeks at a time — leading Jolie to come up with the idea.
“She thought it would be interesting and romantic if we took a little razor blade and sliced our fingers, smeared a little blood on these lockets and you wear it… just like you wear your son or daughter’s baby hair in one,” he said. “From that we were wearing quart jars of blood around our necks.”
As InStyle reported, Thornton and Jolie first met while shooting Pushing Tin in 1999. At the time, Jolie was dating actor-director Timmy Hutton, and Thornton was engaged to Laura Dern, but the two eloped in Las Vegas the following year.
They filed for divorce in 2002. Thornton later shared on a 2018 episode of the HFPA in Conversation podcast that their split came down to lifestyle differences.
“Hers is a global lifestyle and mine is an agoraphobic lifestyle,” he said. “So that’s really, that’s the only reason we’re probably not still together.”
Seven years later, that sentiment remains.
“And of course, Angelina [Jolie] and I had a great time together. That was one of the greatest times of my life,” he told Greene. “She and I are still very, very close friends. And that was the one that ended up being a really civilized breakup. We simply split up because our lifestyles were so different.”
