These are photos of Billy Bob Thornton last week in LA where he’s been promoting FX’s Fargo. The show debuted last Tuesday and is a reworking of the Coen brothers’ film. Did you watch it? The first episode was so much morbid fun, and Billy Bob has eased up on the Botox. He went overboard a few years ago and didn’t look like himself at all. It’s nice to see his scraggly return to the limelight. This is also his first television show. He plays Lorne Malvo, the show’s mysterious, malevolent stranger and “agent of mayhem” to perfection.

Billy Bob sat down with the Telegraph to promote the show. He seems genuinely mystified by his reputation as a bad dude. I have to chuckle a bit. Billy Bob must have known what he was doing way back when — remember when he and Angelina did it in the car before a red carpet? Plus the blood vials. Billy Bob’s also done his fair share of womanizing before and after his Angelina phase. Billy Bob talks about his rep and how hard it was to make it in Hollywood:

On taking Fargo: “When I was offered it, I said I didn’t want to do television. I had held out against it all these years. When I was coming up as an actor, TV was a bad word to us. TV has cachet; this is where all the good sh-t is. You are more free as an actor on television now than you are in movies where they want you to cut everything down to an hour and a half. What ends up on the floor is all the great character development and all you’re left with is the plot.”

Shooting in -30C degrees in Canada: “It was all necessary for the project, but difficult to work in, especially when you weigh 135lbs. My legs are essentially just bones with skin stretched over them. I knew the film inside out before we started on this project. But you don’t want to start imitating something like that. Even though my character is totally unrelated to the movie, I was conscious that I wanted to treat this as a completely new animal.”

This role isn’t a Billy Bob stereotype: “People always think I’ve played a lot of bad guys. I’ve played some smartasses, and I’ve played characters with a dark sense of humour, but the last time I played a really bad guy was probably in One False Move [in which he played an immoral thief] in 1992.”

His inaccurate rep: “For whatever reason, I got included, especially in the Nineties and early 2000s, in the category of the bad boy — in my personal life, I mean. I’m not sure exactly how that happened,” he adds, looking mystified. “I didn’t ever do anything that nobody else was doing, and, frankly, probably not as much. I’m pleased that I’m probably too old to be called a bad boy anymore… though ‘bad man’ just sounds a lot worse.”

He was no overnight success: “I thought maybe I could get into a band in California. Then I got out here and met a couple of guys who were in an acting class and encouraged me to check it out. The first six or seven years in California, I lived hand to mouth. I was homeless a couple of times; I just tended to park up with whoever would let me stay with them. So, yeah, it was a struggle. But my whole life was a struggle. If I’d left the lap of luxury to go out there, I might have gone back. But what would I go back to? It was hard in both places, but at least in LA, I had the chance to live out some dreams.”

[From Telegraph]

Bad Santa doesn’t really count as an “evil” role, so Billy Bob is right about his lack of villainous film roles. He’s really having a good time with his Fargo character. You can see delight dancing in his eyes as he plays Malvo. Billy Bob will been seen next in London Fields along with Amber Heard (and her reasonable camera demands) and Jim Sturgess. The movie also has a cameo from Johnny Depp, which should be … quirky. I’ll be watching for the Billy Bob factor instead. He’s never been classically handsome, but there’s just something attractive about him. He has the voice and “the walk.”

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet & WENN