Billy Bob Thornton Explains Those ‘Blood Necklaces’ With Angelina Jolie

Billy Bob Thornton has finally spoken out about those “blood necklaces” that he and Angelina Jolie wore when they were married in the early 2000s.

“A lot of the things they said about us at the time were exaggerated,” The 62-year-old actor said in a recent interview, per PEOPLE. “It wasn’t as crazy as people wrote about it.”

“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 further explained.

“It was that easy,” Thornton continued. “But by the time it came out in the press it sounded like we were wearing a bucket of blood around our necks.”

The Sling Blade star also said that he looks back “at that time as a great time,” regarding his relationship with Jolie, who is almost 20 years younger than him. He later went on to reveal that the two remain close to this day.

“Angie is still a friend of mine and she’s a great person and she’s done so much,” Thornton explained. “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.”

Thornton eventually opened up about why he believes they split, saying they “just had different lifestyles.”

“Hers is a global lifestyle and mine is an agoraphobic lifestyle,” he said jokingly. “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.”

The former couple were married from 2000 until 2003, with Jolie having been married once before — to Elementary’s Jonny Lee Miller — and Thornton had already been married a few times before.

He was married to Melissa Lee Gatlin from 1978 to 1980, Toni Lawrence from 1986 to 1988, actress Cynda Williams from 1990 to 1992, and Pietra Dawn Cherniak from 1993 to 1997.

After his divorce form Jolie, Thornton met Connie Angland makeup effects artist, whom he is still with today. The couple have a daughter named Bella, and they married in 2014.

Interestingly, Thornton also dated, and was engaged to be married to, actress Laura Dern in the late ’90s, but he ended up marrying Jolie instead.

As for Jolie, she is currently going thorough a divorce from actor Brad Pitt, with many custody issues recently arising. The two are reportedly attempting to work things out without it getting any messier.