Billy Bob Thornton Says There Is Only One Reason He Is Not Still Married to Angelina Jolie

Billy Bob Thornton is getting candid about his highly-publicized marriage to Angelina Jolie.

“I look at that time as a great time,” the Goliath star, 62, said during the latest HFPA in Conversation podcast episode of Jolie, 43, whom he was married to from 2000 to 2003.

“Angie is still a friend of mine and she’s a great person and she’s done so much,” he added. “She makes movies that are important to her whether they succeed or fail, she still does what she believes in and I’ll always respect her for that.”

The actor also spoke about the media coverage of the relationship. “A lot of the things they said about us at the time were exaggerated,” he explained, adding, “It wasn’t as crazy as people wrote about it.”

Specifically, he addressed the coverage surrounding the necklaces he and Jolie wore at the time, which contained vials of each other’s blood.

“The necklaces were a very simple thing, ‘Hey let’s poke our fingers with a pen and smear a little blood on there and when we’re away from each other we’ll wear the necklace,’ ” he said. “It was that easy. But by the time it came out in the press it sounded like we were wearing a bucket of blood around our necks.”

As for why they split, Thornton said, “We just had different lifestyles. Hers is a global lifestyle and mine is an agoraphobic lifestyle,” he said with a laugh. “So that’s really, that’s the only reason we’re probably not still together, maybe. There was a different path in life we wanted to take.”

In 2016, during Jolie’s high-profile split from Brad Pitt, Thornton also spoke about his marriage to Jolie.

“I never felt good enough for her,” he shared, adding that despite his many years in Hollywood, he’s “real uncomfortable around rich and important people.”

And he wasn’t looking to change his ways.

“I like how I am,” he said.

Thornton is now married Connie Angland, his long-time partner and mother to his 13-year-old daughter Bella.