Billy Bob Thornton has been married to Connie Angland for a decade, but he actually never thought it would happen.
“Maybe there’s something about the official nature of it — maybe it’s once there’s a paper signed or a door seems closed, then I turn into more of a caged lion or something,” Thornton told HuffPost Live in August 2014.
The Oscar winner deliberately keeps his personal life relatively close to the vest in part because of the scrutiny that surrounded his highest-profile marriage to his fifth wife, Angelina Jolie.
Aside from Angland and Jolie, Thornton was previously married to Melissa Lee Gatlin from 1978 to 1980, Toni Lawrence from 1986 to 1988, Cynda Williams from 1990 to 1992 and Pietra Dawn Cherniak from 1993 to 1997. He was also previously engaged to Oscar winner Laura Dern, with whom he was in a relationship from 1997 to 1999.
As for what he’s learned from walking down the aisle five times (at that point) in 2003, Thornton previously told PEOPLE his best marriage advice. “Go into it with the idea that you want it to last, but don’t put pressure on yourself to try to achieve perfection every day, because I think that’s when you get into trouble,” Thornton said at the time.
So who is Billy Bob Thornton’s wife? Here’s everything to know about Connie Angland and her relationship with the actor.
She used to work in movies
In a 2008 interview with Maxim, Thornton said he’d likely never marry again to save Angland the public scrutiny.
“I told Connie I didn’t want to put her through that. We do fine. We’ve been together for four years now. We have a child together,” he said at the time. “If we get married, then the press will start calling her ‘Number Six.’ ”
A few years later, they appeared to change their minds. Thornton and Angland married quietly on Oct. 22, 2014, and the world didn’t find out until February of the next year. A rep for the actor told PEOPLE, that the couple wed “at their home in Los Angeles during a private ceremony before family.”
Thornton later revealed on The Late Late Show with James Corden that partly, to avoid paparazzi and press, they wed in their front yard using a minister who came to their home and had them sign paperwork that wouldn’t become public record as a means to keep the happy news private until they were ready to share it with the world.
Aside from their secret wedding, Thornton has another big sign of commitment to Angland: According to GQ, he has her name tattooed on his spine.
She and Thornton share a daughter
Thornton and Angland met shortly after his divorce from his fifth wife, Jolie, in May 2003. The couple announced Angland’s pregnancy in April 2004 and welcomed their daughter Bella on Sept. 22, 2004, with the newborn weighing in at 6 lbs., 1 1/2 oz.
Bella is Angland’s first and only child and Thornton’s fourth. He said when Bella was three months old, “I haven’t been the father of an infant for a long time so it takes some getting used to again. But you don’t forget about the diaper!”
When Bella was 9 years old, Thornton said that she enjoyed reading to him and dressing up like a ladybug. He also described her personality as an infant as “fiery” and “sweet.”
In a 2016 interview with GQ, Thornton shared that he liked driving Bella around and listening to her favorite pop music, which includes artists like Christina Perri and Taylor Swift, and that they’re both fans of My Little Pony. Thornton has Bella’s name tattooed on his left arm.
The actor also said that he and Angland ended up tying the knot for Bella. “We did for her, really,” he said on The Late Late Show with James Corden in 2015. “Because after a while, it was like, ‘Why aren’t my mommy and daddy married after 12 years?’ ”
He added, “The reason I didn’t want to [get married initially] is, my marriages were always very short, and I don’t like to try to fix things that aren’t broken. I said, ‘Look, I got a pretty bad record, and things are going fine.’ ”
Her personality meshes well with his
In his 2016 GQ interview, Thornton explained that Angland’s low-key nature is part of what makes them such a great pairing.
Speaking of his prior relationship with Jolie, Thornton said he was “real uncomfortable around rich and important people.” In another interview, he described himself jokingly as having an “agoraphobic lifestyle.”
The actor and musician previously told PEOPLE that he works to find a balance between his artistic passions and his family life at home.
“I think I’ll probably try to strike a balance between music, movies and TV,” he once told PEOPLE. “I mean, you know, if you can do one each, each year, if I can make a record and go on tour, if I can make one movie and one TV thing, that that seems pretty good, you know?” he said. “And I’ve got kids to take care of, so you know, why not?”
They have red carpet date nights
Though Thornton said he and Angland are both homebodies, they do occasionally enjoy hitting red carpets together, including the 2022 premiere of Netflix’s The Gray Man, in which Thornton starred as a retired CIA official named Donald Fitzroy, who orders a wayward assassin (played by Ryan Gosling) to be killed.
Prior to that, Thornton and Angland attended a screening of A Million Little Pieces in West Hollywood in December 2019,
In January 2017, Angland was on hand with Thornton at the Golden Globes, where he won the award for best actor in a drama television series for his role in Amazon’s Goliath.
More recently, the couple stepped out at the premiere of Thornton’s show Landman in November 2024.
They chose their home for practical (and funny) reasons
During an interview on Jimmy Kimmel Live in September 2021, Thornton said he, Angland and his daughter Bella had moved into a new house in Pacoima, Calif., because it had a home recording studio.
“Connie, my wife, she really wanted us to have that,” he said, before jokingly adding, “Because it keeps me at home. And also I don’t have to drive all the way to the Sunset Marquis [hotel in West Hollywood] when she kicks me out. I can just go down the hill to the recording studio.”
Kimmel and Thornton joked that the hotel is like his “couch” for when he’s gotten into arguments with his wives — and, previously, when he’s been in the process of divorcing them.
Source: People
