It's easy to forget that certain celebrity couples were ever an item. Remember how Matt Damon and Winona Ryder were together? Or Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson? Or Sarah Jessica Parker and Robert Downey Jr? However, the main celebrity couple that everyone forgets about is Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie. Maybe it's because Brangelina was a thing for so long (only ending last year) that it always slips my mind as a result.
Even at the time, it was a little hard for people to get their heads around: the two actors seemed to be complete opposites. You had Angelina, who was known as a charismatic sex symbol for starring in movies like Girl Interrupted. Billy Bob Thornton, on the other hand, was regarded as an eccentric character actor with an eclectic resumé, best known for the critically-acclaimed movie Slingblade.
Despite all the press and paparazzi's misgivings about the match, the pair appeared to be head over heels in love, and it seemed like an ideal relationship. Then, almost as suddenly as they'd gotten hitched, the couple split up again after just two years, separating in 2002 and divorcing the year after.
Now, Thornton has opened up about why he and Jolie split up, in a candid interview on the "HFPA in Conversation" podcast. In it, Thornton reminisced that: "I remember our time together as really being great. We just had different lifestyles. Her's is a global lifestyle and mine is an agoraphobic lifestyle. So, that’s the only reason we’re probably not still together, maybe, because of a different path in life we wanted to take."
Thornton also spilled the beans on the truth behind some of the more outrageous rumours circulating about the couple, including that they had discussed having their bedroom padded because their sex was so crazy and that they had worn vials filled with each other's blood around their necks when dating.
Thornton stated: "The necklaces were a very simple thing: ‘Hey, let’s poke our fingers with a pen and smear a little blood on there, and when we’re away from each other we’ll wear the necklace.’ It was that easy. But by the time it came out in the press, it sounded like we were wearing a bucket of blood around our necks ... We had so much fun. A lot of the things they said about us at the time were exaggerated. It wasn’t as crazy as people wrote about it, you know what I mean?"
He added, "I look at that time as a great time. Angie is still a friend of mine and she’s a great person, and she’s done so much."
Indeed, it's true that the two of them are still extremely amicable, and Jolie was even gracious enough to write the foreword to Thornton’s book, The Billy Bob Tapes: A Cave Full of Ghosts, in 2012. Wow, if that's not a case of former couple goals, then I don't know what is.
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