Billy Bob Thornton on Growing up With a Psychic Mom

Billy Bob Thornton: “I was raised with sports, and hard work, and biscuits, and gravy on one side, and on the other side, books, and crystals, and burial mounds, and spirits, and all that kind of thing.”
Epoch Video
11/27/2014
Updated:
11/27/2014

 

Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton was raised in Hot Springs, Ark., by an Irish-American father and a mother of Italian and Native American descent. As if the rich mix of cultural influences Billy Bob received growing up wasn’t interesting enough, his mother was a psychic. Find out why he says having a clairvoyant mom doesn’t pan out well for a mischievous kid.

“It wasn’t like she had a store downtown with a crystal ball sign out front or anything like that,” said Thornton. “But people would come to the house and she would do readings for them.”

Of his mixed cultural heritage, he said: “I was raised with sports, and hard work, and biscuits, and gravy on one side, and on the other side, books, and crystals, and burial mounds, and spirits, and all that kind of thing.”

“That’s how people like me turn out the way they do—all those mixtures, you know,” he said.

“When you’re mom’s psychic, it’s not easy to sneak in the house drunk at night.”