Article: Billy, don't be a hero Billy Bob Thornton, star of Sling Blade, Armageddon and now Monster's Ball, is a strange fellow. He carries his wife's blood around in a phial, hates Komodo dragons and prefers plastic cutlery to metal. He's at his best playing outsiders, drifters and cruel racists - but are these characters anything like Thornton himself? CHARLOTTE O'SULLIVAN asks him

Just before I interview 46-year-old Billy Bob Thornton (feted writer, actor, director; tolerated country n' blues man) I read a typical interview with his young actress wife, Angelina Jolie, in which she hyperventilates her way through a series of tributes to him. In passing, she notes that if Billy Bob were ever to betray her with another woman, she would "beat them both to death so quickly".

Thornton's latest film is Monster's Ball, a sweaty, interracial love story set in a smalltown Georgia of lonesome diners and rancid motels. At Thornton's very plush hotel suite, I'm greeted by his PA. Initially, she seems normal enough, grumbling about the fact that Thornton didn't win an Oscar for ...

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