Billy Bob Thornton calls out celebrities for bringing politics to Hollywood award shows

Billy Bob Thornton is calling out celebrities who bring politics to award shows.

During a recent interview on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” the 70-year-old actor shared he doesn’t really “care about awards anymore,” saying he’s “got plenty of them” and won most of them “under the wire, when awards were kind of real still.”

“I’ve won a couple recently,” he said. “But these days I just look at it as like, ‘Oh, OK, we’re gonna go over here and, you know, have some dry chicken breast and green beans, you know, and we’ll listen to people get up there and pontificate about how awesome they are.’”

He explained that if someone wins an award and is “truly honored by it,” he thinks they should take their time on stage to “honor the people who gave it to you,” rather than bring awareness to a cause.

He said, “There is a time and place for that,” and during award shows, “you should just stick to what it is.”

“Don’t go up there and talk about saving the badgers in Wisconsin or something, you know what I’m saying?” he said. “And people would argue and say, ‘Well, no, because I have a voice and because everybody knows me. This is a great platform for me to put this out there.’

“Well, how about this? If you have a billion dollars, and you want to save the badgers, f—ing save them,” he added. “I mean, you got plenty of money to save the badgers, trust me. That is not, that’s barely gonna cut into your budget.”

The host, Joe Rogan, agreed, adding it is like “saying how special you are because you’re really concerned about people in Sudan or whatever” and is their way “to let everybody know that you’re an amazing person.”

Thornton got his big break in Hollywood in the 1996 movie, “Sling Blade,” which he wrote, directed and starred in. The movie earned him an Academy Award win for best writing and a nomination for actor in a leading role.

Looking back on his career, Thornton told Fox News Digital in November 2024, he is happy he found success in his acting career when he was older.

“If I had been nominated for an Academy Award when I was 21, who knows what I would have done with it?” he said. 

“I think if it had happened when I was 18 or 21, who knows if I’d even be here now because I was a little bit looser back in those days.

“And, yeah, I’m kind of happy about that because I grew up in the music business, so I was already familiar with being in the entertainment business, but not to that degree,” he continued. “And I think growing up as a musician helped me prepare for some of it because we could be local heroes, sometimes as musicians or regional. But this was a big blast.”

Thorton stars alongside Demi Moore in the hit Paramount + series, “Landman,” as Tommy Norris, an oil executive who is trying to make his company No. 1 in the business.