‘Landman’ Star, Billy Bob Thornton, Turned Down The Opportunity To Play An NFL Legend: “You Need A Wider, Shorter, Italian Guy”

Not every role that’s offered is a role that’s worth taking.

A guy like Billy Bob Thornton – who has been in the industry for close to 40 years – knows that better than anybody. The soon to be 70-year-old actor has been a part of plenty of successful projects throughout his career, with the latest one being the hit Paramount+ show Landman.

Evidently when Taylor Sheridan approached him about the role (the Yellowstone creator often creates parts for specific actors and actresses), he felt at home enough in the character to take it on. But if he didn’t feel like Tommy Norris was a good fit for him, he wouldn’t have taken it.

Thornton has passed on roles and parts many times before because he didn’t realistically see himself in it. According to a story he told at the ATX TV Festival during a Landman panel, Billy Bob was once strangely offered the role of an NFL/Green Bay Packers legend… and he was a bit shocked that he was even asked:

“I don’t take things that I’m not right for. I’ve turned down many things. I was offered to play Vince Lombardi once, and I was like, ‘What?’ I was like, ‘You need a wider, shorter, Italian guy from the East Coast for that. Not a Texarkansan.'”

Yeah… a quick search of the legendary Green Bay Packers coach Vince Lombardi (the guy the Super Bowl trophy is named after) makes that offer to Billy Bob Thornton a head-scratcher, to say the least.

And considering that there’s currently not a biopic following Vince Lombardi that exists, I’m guessing the movie never made it off the ground. There’s an ESPN biopic that the NFL was apparently working on in the early 2010s (some searches say Robert De Niro was attached to play Lombardi), but the film evidently didn’t make it past the early development stages.

Knowing that… Billy Bob Thornton either a) threw off the entire trajectory of the biopic or b) made the right call passing on it. Either way, the seasoned actor knows when to take the bait and when to cut the line, as he illustrated with another story:

“There have been many things like that, so it’s a thing that you learn after a while. It’s just an instinct. You look at it and go, ‘If I think I’m the best guy for it, I’ll take it if I like it. If I think I’m wrong, (I won’t).’

One time I got J.T. Walsh – God rest his soul – I got J.T. a part in a movie one time because the director met with me, and I said, ‘Eh, there’s a guy sitting out in the lobby there who’s way better for it than I am.’ And J.T. played the part, and he was awesome.”

Sounds like Billy Bob Thornton has quite the gift when it comes to discernment.

Though he tackled the question of knowing what’s right for him rather carefully, he had no issue strongly voicing when he knows a role is wrong for someone else… and got specific with his complaint:

“These days, they cast a lot of people because they seem fancy. If you’re doing a movie in Texas, we’ve got plenty of Texans. You know what I mean? There’s all kinds of Texans. And there are all kinds of people raised in a similar way near Texas. We don’t have to go to other countries to get people to play cowboys – or oil guys, whatever it is. That happens.”

I’m sure if you are from Texas, that quote goes hard. And Billy Bob Thornton does have a point there… why outsource cowboys and oil guys when you’ve got plenty of hard-working, red (white and blue) blooded Americans that can step into those roles? Like Thornton did with Tommy Norris.

If you want to hear more from Billy Bob Thornton and others from the Landman cast, make sure to check out the full panel from the recent ATX TV Festival:

The post ‘Landman’ Star, Billy Bob Thornton, Turned Down The Opportunity To Play An NFL Legend: “You Need A Wider, Shorter, Italian Guy” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.