Billy Bob Thornton Says Sixth Wife Connie ‘Drug Me Out of the Gutter’ When They Met 22 Years Ago: ‘I Needed Somebody’

Billy Bob Thornton credits wife Connie Angland for lifting him up when he needed someone most.

The actor, who currently stars on the new series Landman, appeared on The Drew Barrymore Show for the Tuesday, Nov. 19 episode, at one point recalling how he met his wife.

Thornton has been with Angland for 22 years, married for 10 of those, and they share daughter Bella, now 20. (He’s also dad to Amanda, William and Harry from previous relationships.)

He and Angland met on the set of his 2003 comedy Bad Santa, he recalled, at a time “when I needed somebody to meet me, because I was going through kind of a lost weekend, you know what I mean?”

Host Barrymore, 49, replied, “I spent like two decades in a ‘lost weekend.’ I totally understand. Maybe three.”

“Well, her sister Carrie was a makeup artist on Bad Santa, and she said, ‘My sister’s gonna visit, and I got a feeling that you’re really gonna like her.’ And, sure enough, I did. And we were together within probably a couple of months maybe. Yeah, she kind of drug me out of the gutter, which was awesome.”

He added with a laugh, “We’ve been together longer than if you totaled up all the other five [marriages], it’s more time….”

Thornton was previously married to Melissa Lee Gatlin, Toni Lawrence, Cynda Williams, Pietra Dawn Cherniak, and Angelina Jolie. He was also previously engaged to Laura Dern in the late ’90s.

“You wanna hear something that really freaked me out? Because it’s six for me,” he said to Barrymore. “So one time, I don’t know how I got there, but you know when you go on the internet to look something up and then it leads you to like a bunch of other stuff and you don’t really wanna look at it, but you do anyway?”

He continued, “So I’m looking at it one day and they had the people with the most marriages in Hollywood. And I was the only person who was alive on it. It had, like, Mickey Rooney and Elizabeth Taylor and all these people — I mean, people from like, you know, that started in the ’30s!” (Taylor, who died in 2011 at age 79, and Rooney, who died in 2014 at age 93, both got married eight times.)

The Drew Barrymore Show airs weekdays (check local listings). Landman is streaming exclusively on Paramount+.