Billy Thornton
- Birthplace: Alpine, Arkansas
- Birthday: August 4, 1955
Billy Bob Thornton became a Hollywood player with "Sling Blade" (1996), on which he did triple duty as star, screenwriter and director. The project had its genesis in a monologue the actor created on the set of his first TV-movie, "The Man Who Broke 1,000 Chains" (HBO, 1987) to channel his anger. Thornton created Karl Childers, a mentally-challenged murderer, and nurtured the character for close to a decade, first performing the soliloquies on stage and then in the 1994 short "Some Folks Call It a Sling Blade", dir…more