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Apple TV<\/p>\n
Billy Bob Thornton as the pawnshop owner in a 1987 episode of “Matlock”<\/p>\n
It came as a surprise to Thornton, who saw himself as a musician at the time.<\/p>\n
“I didn\u2019t know s— about acting. I wasn\u2019t even a movie guy growing up. We had one theater in town, the Ritz Theater, which showed only the latest Disney movie,” he explained.<\/p>\n
“But after I moved, I discovered that getting into the music scene wasn\u2019t so easy. The first guy I met out there, Jeff Lester, told me to come to his acting class. So I did. I starved to death for years, but then I started getting these small parts, like a pawnshop owner on\u00a0Matlock.”<\/p>\n
The role, a blip on the remarkable career the actor has enjoyed since, paid handsomely for the time.<\/p>\n
“I had one scene and made $361. I was like, ‘Are you kidding me? In one day?’ To survive back in Arkansas, I had worked at a sawmill, a machine shop, a storm door factory, hauled hay, all that s—. But that gave me the ability to be an actor.”<\/p>\n
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Jon Kopaloff\/Getty <\/p>\n
Billy Bob Thornton<\/p>\n
He continued, “I had stories in my head, and I grew up around a lot of crazy characters. The strongest you\u2019ll ever be as an actor is by using your own life experience. People always said, ‘Well, I think you made it as an actor because you\u2019re so natural.’ I don\u2019t know any other way to be! I always tell people my success in the movie world came from ignorance more than anything else.”<\/p>\n
In June, Thornton sat down with Kathy Bates for Variety\u2019s \u2018Actors on Actors’ series, during which he recalled his Matlock experience.<\/p>\n
“It was the first television role I ever did. I had one scene. I played a pawn shop owner,” he shared, remembering it felt like a bigger deal than it ultimately was.<\/p>\n
“We shot it in Little Tokyo down there and I get to the set, and Bob Sweeney was directing hte episode, who had directed most of the original Andy Griffith Show, so I thought, ‘Not only am I going to meet Andy Griffith, but with Bob Sweeney, who directed those [episodes] that I’ve been watching since I was a little kid.”<\/p>\n
When he met Griffith, Thornton recalls, “I’m all nerved up and stuff, and I went over to him and I said, ‘Mr. Griffith, my name is [mumbles,]’ just sort of mumbling everything. And I said, ‘I just want to tell you that those comedy records you used to do were one of the reasons I started acting.’ And he looked at me and kind of shook his head and walked away.” <\/p>\n
Read the original article on People<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEED TO KNOW Billy Bob Thornton\u00a0has enjoyed an acting career that’s spanned nearly four decades The actor, 70,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[84937,430,156,64542,111,139,69,97001],"class_list":{"0":"post-143778","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-billy-bob-thornton","9":"tag-celebrities","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-matlock","12":"tag-new-zealand","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-television-role"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}