Billy Bob Thornton has said his marriage to Angelina Jolie ended due to differences in their lifestyles.
The actor, 70, and Jolie, 50, were married from 2000 to 2003. Jolie was his fifth wife, and Thornton was her second husband after Johnny Lee Miller.
“That was one of the greatest times of my life,” Thornton told Rolling Stone. “She and I are still very, very close friends. And that was the one that ended up being a really civilised breakup.”
He continued: “We simply split up because our lifestyles were so different.”
During the years they were together, the Hollywood couple were featured in magazines and walked red carpets – resulting in one famous interview at the premiere of Gone in 60 Seconds in 2000, in which the pair appeared infatuated with one another.
Thornton said the public fascination surrounding their relationship was “pretty weird” at the time.
“When we met, I was the more famous one,” he has now said. “And then when we got together, for some reason, the people and the media are very interested in celebrity couples, that seems to be a very popular thing.
“So it was weird. We couldn’t go anywhere. I mean, we did, and then of course we had times when we would say things that became sound bites or whatever.”
At the time of their relationship, it was reported that the couple wore vials of each other’s blood around their necks.
"We each had a little locket, literally with a drop of blood in them," the Monster’s Ball star 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."
The actors met while filming the 1999 film Pushing Tin, eloping a year later in Las Vegas – shortly after Thornton had ended his engagement to Laura Dern.
Three months before they separated, the two announced they had planned to adopt a child from Cambodia. Ultimately Jolie proceeded with the process as a single parent, officially adopting her first son Maddox as a single parent.
Thornton is now married to his sixth wife, Connie Angland, whom he has been with for 20 years. They share a 21-year-old daughter named Bella. He is also the father of three other children.
“I found the right spot to be,” he told Rolling Stone about his current marriage. “The other times I got married were just like, you had a little too much to drink one night and somebody said, ‘We should get married.’ You go, ‘Yeah, OK.’ I always tell people, at least I was trying.”
Jolie, meanwhile, finalised her divorce from Brad Pitt in December 2024 following the eight-year legal battle that ensued after she filed for divorce in 2016.
The former couple share six children: Maddox, 23, Pax, 21, Zahara, 20, Shiloh, 19, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 16.
