Billy Bob's Filmography

MONSTER'S BALL (2002)

Movie Quote
HANK: I think we're gonna do alright.

Plot
Halle Berry plays the emotionally battered Leticia Musgrove, whose husband Lawrence (Puff Daddy) is executed by the state of Georgia. Billy Bob plays the stoic Hank Grotowski, the death row guard who escorts Lawrence to his date with the chair. Hank lives with his bigoted, disabled father Buck (Peter Boyle) and his son Sonny (Heath Ledger).  The Grotowskis comprise three generations of prison guards frozen in their inability to love one another. Leticia lives with her obese, sweet-tempered son Tyrell (excellent newcomer Cojonji Calhoun) and frequently loses patience with him. Tragedy strikes both the Musgrove and Grotowski families, leaving Hank and Leticia adrift in their grief and stumbling to create new lives for themselves. That new life begins with an unexpected love affair between Hank and Leticia, embodied not so much by the much-talked-about sex scene, but by the small things Hank and Leticia do for one another--buying a hat, painting a living room, mowing a lawn.  Leticia does not realize that Hank is the man who escorted her late husband Lawrence to his death.  Will the past undermine the fragile, tentative salvation that Leticia and Hank have found together?

What Billy Bob Gets To Do
Aside from participating with grace and maturity in one of the most realistic and emotional love scenes in American cinema history, he reveals the gradual evolution of a man who is not entirely comfortable with either his miscreant father's prejudices or his son's tolerance.  Despite the fact that Hank denounces Sonny as a weakling because he can't handle the horror of Lawrence's execution, Hank is exhibits great decency and steadiness toward Lawrence in his final hours.  At the film's outset, Hank's core decency is a faintly heard pulse beneath his stoicism, but Billy Bob gradually makes the pulse heard, largely in dialogue-free scenes which show Hank doing every day things (driving to work, buying ice cream, painting, mowing) rather than indulging in revelatory soliloquies.  Billy Bob shows us Hank's unfolding until that pulse is loud and steady.  Not so incidentally, Billy Bob's performance of Hank is based on his own father, Billy Ray Thornton.

Backstory
Marc Forster's unobtrusively and intelligently directed tale of loss, love, and redemption won Halle Berry her well-deserved Academy Award^® for best actress (the first for an African American actress and in the same evening that Denzel Washington clinched his best actor prize for TRAINING DAY) and confirmed Billy Bob's versatility as a big screen romantic lead. MONSTER'S BALL was also nominated for Best Original Screenplay (by Milo Addica and Will Rokos, both of whom played supporting roles in the film).   Puff Daddy makes his feature film debut, joined in the cast by another rapper, Mos Def, who plays Hank's next door neighbor, Ryrus.  To carry the recurring theme of fathers and sons one step further, Hank greets Ryrus' two little sons as "Willie and Harry," which are, of course, the names of Billy Bob's own, real-life boys.  And yes, that photo Leticia finds toward the end of the film of Sonny as a little boy is, in fact, a photo of Billy Bob as a little boy.

Awards (for Billy Bob Thornton)
Florida Film Critics Circle (Best Actor) - 2002 - Winner
National Board of Review USA (Best Actor) - 2001 - Winner
Golden Satellite Award (Best Actor Motion Picture, Drama) 2001 - Nomination

Awards (for MONSTER'S BALL)
The list is extensive; here's the IMDb awards page.

Relevant Links
IMDb Link
Official Site
Romantic/Dramatic Movies has lots of links
Halle Berry interview
Preview page
Ice cream, anyone?

Related Merchandise
The soundtrack album is mostly tracks of the fine score by the composing team of Asche and Spencer, but also features the Jayhawks' I'm Your Man and songs by Jean Wells, Red Meat, and Jimmy Dale Gilmore.  Blue Bunny Ice Cream, Hank's favorite snack, can be had in freezer sections across the south (although, truth be told, that's really Chocolate Tofutti--a delicious, soy-based ice cream--that Billy Bob's lapping up con brio).