Thornton may play a character that’s not well-liked in Taylor Sheridan’s Landman, but he never necessarily wants to play villains.
Variety reports that Billy Bob Thornton turned down two big villain roles and he explains why he wasn’t interested while on The Playlist’s Bingeworthy podcast. Thornton revealed that he turned down playing the Green Goblin in Sam Raimi’s original Spider-Man, as well as Owen Davian, the villain of J.J. Abram’s Mission: Impossible III, which eventually went to Phillip Seymour Hoffman. Thornton expounded,
I don’t have much interest in those kinds of roles. With the Green Goblin, I didn’t feel like getting up at 4 a.m. for five or six hours of makeup. And with Mission: Impossible III, I didn’t want to be the guy trying to kill Tom Cruise. If you’re the bad guy in a big movie like that, audiences remember it forever. I prefer to keep things looser and less predictable.”
Meanwhile, Willem Dafoe, who can be seen in the upcoming Nosferatu, is open to returning to the role of Green Goblin for another go-around with the web-slinger. He told Inverse last year, “If everything was right, sure. I mean, that’s a great role. I liked the fact that it’s a double role both times. Twenty years ago, and fairly recently, both times [were] very different experiences, but I had a good time on both.” Back when he did press for Spider-Man: No Way Home, Dafoe wanted to make sure that he came back, it was for more than a brief appearance, “I really didn’t want to do a cameo. I wanted to make sure there was something substantial enough to do that wasn’t just a tip of the hat. And the other thing was, I said I really want there to be action — I want to take part in action scenes. Because that’s really fun for me. It’s the only way to root the character. Otherwise, it just becomes a series of memes.”
Thornton is currently playing a gruff oilman in Taylor Sheridan’s new series Landman. Thornton recently defended having to play a certain type of role that people may find controversial and he responded to critics by saying, “There’s another side to this, and here’s what it is. People more so these days than ever watch movies or TV or listen to music and read novels from the point of view of their own agenda. I mean, if you’re doing a movie about a serial killer and the guy plays an amazing serial killer, it’s not like they’re saying we’re promoting serial killers. We’re just showing you a piece of entertainment that’s supposed to move you in some way or entertain you in some way.”
