Billy Bob Thornton admits he thought film was a 'career ender'

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Billy Bob Thornton has admitted he thought his hit movie Bad Santa was going to be a “career ender”.

The 2003 film saw the Hollywood star play Willie, a professional crook dressed up as a department store Father Christmas and with a plan to rob malls. With the tagline “He doesn’t care if you’re naughty or nice”, it saw Thornton’s sex addict and alcoholic Santa swearing, smoking and generally behaving badly.

It went on to become a success, acquiring cult status, which Thornton said on The One Show was “a shock” to him.

What, how and why?

Thornton was on the BBC programme on Thursday, 7 November to talk about his news series Landman, along with co-star Jon Hamm, and presenter Alex Jones said she had to ask about Bad Santa.

“My manager talked me into that, he talked me into doing it,” he confessed. “He told me the story and I said, ‘That’s going to be a career ender there’.”

However, everything changed when the star got his hands on the script.

“I read about a third of it," he said. "I called him immediately and I said, ‘I’ve got to do this!’ It was so hilarious. I mean, I was laughing so hard I cried and I could hear all that coming out of me.”

Thornton said it was thought the film would do fairly well but he didn’t expect it to become as popular as it did.

Read more: The One Show

“One way or the other, we expected it to do OK,” he said. “I mean, we thought people would think it was funny and everything but then we thought a lot of people would think it was way too dark and everything.

"So when it became iconic it was quite a shock.”

What else did Billy Bob Thornton say on The One Show?

The same year the actor was also in a very different Christmas film, Love Actually. He said: "The other thing is, I have two movies every Christmas that, one, Love Actually, which is like a very romantic movie and all this kind of stuff.”

“Well I wasn’t as romantic in it,” he joked, referring to his role as a US President who acts inappropriately towards a junior staff member at No 10 (played by Martine McCutcheon).

“But one way or the other, every Christmas it’s like, you have the Love Actually people and you have the Bad Santa people and sometimes they, actually there’s a little overlap.”

The One Show airs on BBC One at 7pm on weekdays.

Landman is on Paramount+ on Monday, 18 November.