Entertainment
Billy Bob Thornton on the return of “Landman”
Billy Bob Thornton’s irreverence mixes with his Southern charm like a good ol’ whiskey sour. After all, he can deliver lines with a sincerity that is almost mocking. He even, with a wink and a nod, played a not-so-saintly St. Nick. Some saw that as a brave choice. He doesn’t. “A brave choice is to see someone being attacked in a park and go intervene; that’s a brave choice,” he said. “It’s not a brave choice to do some weird thing in the middle of a scene, you know what I mean?”
For his current role, he’s making choices, too, mostly just to be himself. “Well, I mean I pretty much am playing myself if I were a landman.”
In the Paramount+ show “Landman,” viewers get a peek behind the curtain of a world we really usually see. “I mean, the movie ‘Giant,’ one of my favorites, I mean, that took place in the oil business of West Texas,” he said. “I always tell people that this is kind of like ‘Giant,’ with cursing!”
Fans have been waiting a long time for “Landman”‘s second season. It debuts next Sunday.
To watch a trailer for Season 2 of “Landman” click on the video player below:
According to his co-star Ali Larter, Thornton doesn’t like to rehearse. “You have to be ready to go,” she told us. “Fresh. Like, whatever happens is going to happen.”
Thornton’s hillbilly vibe isn’t a put-on – he proudly calls himself a Tex-Arkansan, the product of a lot of rural places that even the railroads passed by.
But he wouldn’t trade growing up in a small town for anything: “You know, I keep my upbringing in my back pocket all the time,” he said. “You never forget it.”
While he never worked on an oil rig, he did have his fair share of jobs where dangerous machinery decided if you came home at night or not. “Machine shops and sawmills are both not exactly the safest places to work, especially when you’re a dumb little skinny hippie kid with hair to your waist,” he said. “We always had a joke about sawmill workers, which was, do you know what this is? [He holds up three fingers.] It’s a sawmill worker ordering five beers.”
He went from sawdust to Hollywood fairy dust in a pretty unconventional way. “I only took drama ’cause I thought I gotta get a C in something, you know, because I was not good in school,” he said.
His idols were Robert Duvall, Bruce Dern, and Sam Elliott. But in Los Angeles, at a cocktail party where Thornton was working as a bus boy, famed screenwriter and director Billy Wilder told him acting wasn’t for him.
“He said, ‘Forget about it. You’re too ugly to be a leading man,'” Thornton recalled. “And he said, ‘You’re too pretty to be a character actor.’ I said, ‘What do I do?’ He said, ‘Can you write?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I do write.’ He goes, ‘Write your own stories, create your own characters, don’t stand in line with everybody else.'”
He did write his own story, and create his own character. “Sling Blade” (1996), which he wrote and directed, earned him an Academy Award for best adapted screenplay, and an Oscar nomination for best actor to boot.
Asked if he thinks he’ll go back to writing and directing, he replied, “You know, I don’t know that anybody wants to see what I have to say as a director or writer, ’cause all my stuff is based on Southern literature. And I don’t think that those stories would really be relevant to anyone right now. So, I doubt I ever do it again.”
Letting go of things he loves isn’t easy. We were stunned to find out he hasn’t felt truly care-free since the short-lived TV show “The Outsiders” – more than 30 years ago. “I had no responsibility,” he said. “I was making $2,500 an episode. Never thought I’d see that kind of money. Then, my brother Jimmy died, and changed my life. He was my best friend.”
“So, that’s when you talk about carrying it around in your back pocket?” I asked.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”
They both grew up playing in bands. To this day, Billy Bob still idolizes his brother’s musical talent. “He played every instrument, except drums,” Thornton said. “He looked like he had a disorder when he tried to play drums.”
Thornton never gave up his love of music. His band, The Boxmasters, has recorded 19 albums, and this past Summer they opened for The Who. “We’re just there to waste 45 minutes while they’re getting ready, ya’ know?” he said. “So hopefully the fans will be with us.”
He doesn’t act his age, and in hindsight we probably shouldn’t have asked about it.
“Any thoughts on turning 70?” I said.
“What did you say” Thornton replied, raising an eyebrow. “But uh, no, You know what, it’s so funny you’re scared of every milestone. But this one actually did affect me in a way that I had to, you know, have a few meetings with myself late at night.”
In the end, what Billy Bob Thornton has found is that he and so many of his older contemporaries, including his friend Sam Elliott (who is still acting with him at 81), are still defined by their good work.
“We’ve all seen each other get older,” Thornton said. “And when I see that wisdom and see the respect that people have for them, it just kind of makes everything melt away somehow. I mean, I’m in a successful band and I’m in a successful show. Every day when I wake up, I just say I’m blessed. That’s really it.”
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Story produced by David Rothman. Editor: Steven Tyler.
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Duchess Sophie gave a much-needed break to the well-wishers of the monarchy with a light-hearted dance with inspiring women.
Prince Edward’s wife performed a number of meaningful engagements during her crucial visit to Somalia at the request of the Foreign and Development Office.
The purpose of her trip was “to continue her work supporting survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in the region,” Buckingham Palace shared.
Among many special moments Sophie shared with people in Somalia, her joyful dance delighted viewers in times of crisis.
The Duchess of Edinburgh joined talented women of the Kazuri Beads workshop in Nairobi to celebrate their craftsmanship and community spirit.
Sophie, renowned for her dedication to supporting women worldwide, showcased her dance moves, earning admiration for making “royalty look easy when it’s not.”
In the comments section, one fan praised King Charles’ secret weapon, calling her “a hero.”
“That’s a true Royal right there. What a wonderful woman bringing this awareness to people’s consciousness,” another fan penned.
Cruz Beckham shared behind-the-scenes insights from his UK tour on Wednesday.
It marked a milestone for Cruz, who has been building up to his sold out tour following the release of his single, For Your Love.
Ahead of his band’s first show in Birmingham, the singer revealed a sweet tribute to his mum and the Spice Girls in a series of photos shared to his Instagram Story.
Showing off the stage monitors, Cruz had given each of his bandmates a Spice Girls-themed nicknames.
The monikers included, Smokey Spice, Stoney Spice, Coffee Spice and, Hairy Spice.
Cruz looked excited for his big day as the son of David and Victoria shared glimpses of the preparations before taking to the stage.
In one photo, Cruz rocked a leather jacket as he posed with two men who donned ‘Crews Beckham’ T-shirts.
In another he rocked a baseball cap with his band Cruz Beckham and The Breakers emblazoned across the top.
He wrote: ‘See you soon Birmingham.’
Meanwhile, Cruz’s girlfriend, Jackie Apostel, 30 supported him throughout the tour, proudly showing of his tour merchandise – a hoodie with all of his tour dates on the back.
The couple have been together since 2024, after they were first spotted together at Glastonbury.
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Lauren Chapin, the child actress best known for playing the youngest daughter on the beloved 1950s American sitcom Father Knows Best, died at the age of 80.
She passed away on Tuesday, 24th February 2026, in a hospital in Miami, Florida, from cancer. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Summer Chapin.bout
Know more about Lauren Chapin
To millions of television viewers, Chapin was Kathy Anderson, a giggly, ribbon-haired tomboy affectionately nicknamed “Kitten” by her on-screen father, Jim Anderson, played by Robert Young.
It was a role she first stepped into at just nine years old, after auditioning in the summer of 1954 and winning the part over hundreds of other girls, partly, she later recalled, because of her resemblance to one of Young’s real-life daughters.
She went on to appear in 196 of the show’s 203 episodes across its six-year run, earning five Junior Emmy Awards for Best Child Actress along the way.
The show itself became a cultural touchstone of its era, climbing steadily into the Nielsen top ten and switching networks twice, from CBS to NBC, and back to CBS again, as its popularity grew.
But behind the wholesome family scenes and the cheerful grade-school antics of little Kitten, Chapin’s real life was a world away from the Anderson household.
As she laid bare in her 1989 autobiography, Father Does Know Best: The Lauren Chapin Story, she was raised by an abusive father and an alcoholic mother who had pushed all three of her children into acting to fulfil her own unfulfilled ambitions.
Lauren was just four years old, she wrote, when the abuse began.
When Father Knows Best ended in 1960, Chapin was fourteen. She later described feeling like a has-been before she’d even reached adulthood.
The years that followed were, by her own account, defined by heroin addiction, work as a call girl, a prison sentence for check forgery, and multiple stints in psychiatric facilities.
She made several suicide attempts by the time she was eighteen, had been married and divorced, and suffered eight miscarriages.
In 1964, she sued her mother over her television earnings, alleging she had been made to sign away all rerun benefits, money she said she never saw.
Her path out of that darkness, she said, came through faith.
Chapin became a born-again Christian and was later licensed and ordained as an evangelical minister. She reportedly raised millions of dollars to support abused children and spent years giving religious testimonials about her experiences.
“I’m not proud of my past, but in a strange way, I’m thankful for it,” she once said. “If Christ can love a person like I was, he can love anyone. To me, that’s the real message of my past.”
In the years that followed, she built a quietly different life.
In the early 1980s she taught natural childbirth and worked for a brokerage firm.
She later owned two beauty pageant enterprises and was also credited with helping to launch the early career of actress Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Chapin was born Lauren Ann Chapin on 23rd May 1945, in Los Angeles. Her two older brothers, Billy and Michael Chapin, were also child actors.
She is survived by her daughter, Summer.
For a generation that grew up with Father Knows Best, Chapin was the little girl who cried melodramatically, burst into rooms uninvited, and looked up at her television father with complete trust.
The distance between that image and the life she actually lived makes her story all the more remarkable, and her survival all the more so.
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