Hollywood actor Billy Bob Thornton has finally addressed one of the most enduring legends about his marriage to Angelina Jolie, insisting the infamous story about them wearing vials of each other's blood is a gross exaggeration.
The Truth Behind the Blood Vial Legend
In a candid interview with Rolling Stone, the 70-year-old star set the record straight on the long-running tale. According to Thornton, the reality was far less dramatic than the public perception. "We each had a little locket, literally with a drop of blood in them," he clarified. "That's a romantic little idea, and that's all that was."
Thornton expressed frustration with how the story spiralled into something much darker in the public imagination. "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," he said of the media frenzy that followed.
A Fond Look Back at Marriage and Friendship
Despite the intense public scrutiny, Thornton looks back fondly on his three-year marriage to Jolie, which lasted from 2000 until their split in 2003. "Angelina and I had a great time together," he shared. "That was one of the greatest times of my life. She and I are still very, very close friends."
The actor revealed that their separation was remarkably civil, attributing it solely to their incompatible lifestyles. "We simply split up because our lifestyles were so different," Thornton explained, a sentiment he first shared during a 2018 appearance on the HFPA in Conversation podcast where he described her "global lifestyle" versus his own "agoraphobic lifestyle."
Thorston recalled the challenging period when paparazzi attention intensified during their relationship, noting that he was actually more famous than Jolie at the time. "We couldn't go anywhere," he remembered, calling that era "a pretty weird" time.
Life After Jolie: Marriages and Families
Before marrying Jolie, Thornton had been married four times to Melissa Lee Gatlin (1978-1980), Toni Lawrence (1986-1988), Cynda Williams (1990-1992), and Pietra Dawn Cherniak (1993-1997).
Over a decade after his divorce from Jolie, Thornton married his sixth and current wife, Connie Angland, in 2014. The actor is father to four children: 46-year-old daughter Amanda with Gatlin, two adult sons William (32) and Harry (31) with Cherniak, and 21-year-old daughter Bella with Angland.
Meanwhile, Jolie went on to marry Brad Pitt in 2014. Though they separated in 2019, their divorce was only finalised in December 2024. The former couple remains embroiled in a legal battle that began in 2022 over Jolie's sale of her shares in their French winery, Château Miraval, to alcohol company Stoli Group. Pitt and Jolie share six children: Maddox (23), Pax (21), Zahara (20), Shiloh (19), and twins Vivienne and Knox (16).
