That’s not fair to anyone

“That’s not fair to anyone.” Belatedly, I remember that his fourth wife, an ex-Playboy model, accused him of “spousal abuse” during the divorce proceedings. So what changed? “Well,” a nervous laugh, “my wife and my ex-wife like each other, they get along.”Gorgeous, caring Angelina – he jiggles whenever he mentions her name But that defensive note in his voice isn’t gone for long. Talking about how lucky he is to have her, he stumbles again over the fact that other people aren’t over the moon for him. “But I’m not a wealthy movie star, I’m not someone who has it made.

So no one needs to be jealous of me.”He talks about Jolie in the same way that he talks about his mother – the wonderful woman who loves him so much that it makes him the focus of ill-will.There’s some piece of logic missing, but I can’t work out what it is. I wonder aloud what his mother was doing with his dad in the first place Thornton’s jaw comes jutting out. “Well, I’ve been with people before that I never liked, you know, particularly People want to make a big deal out of things. But I used to do things ‘cos they were there.”His blue sunglasses look more cold and impersonal than ever.”Are you Irish?” he says suddenly. He takes off his sunglasses and proceeds to tell me that he’s part Irish and that he loved Dublin, where he’s just played some gigs with his band.

This is his first big tour – he released an album, Private Radio, earlier in the year – and he says that the two weeks he’s been away from Jolie have been “really hard”. The couple have just adopted a Cambodian orphan baby, Maddox, and all three are going to “take off” for the summer. He’s confident that they’ll be together after that, too: “When I do a movie, she’ll be with me, then she’ll do a movie and I’m with her. The way we’re gonna do it, we’ll never be apart, and we’ll both be with the child. All the time, see.”Maybe it’s the arrival of the baby (and the messy court case involved in bringing him to America) which has made Thornton so wary.

“We’re just hoping we can get by with the minimum of, like, stupidity and gossip from the newspapers.” He sighs “They’ll end up saying he’s from another planet or whatever. I just hope they respect we’re parents trying to lead a normal life.”It’s the same mantra, but with his eyes out in the open Thornton seems like a new man. He talks about how his biggest regret is that he didn’t pursue a career in baseball “I was a pitcher at high school. I was being looked at by the Kansas City Royals, but I had my collar bone broken.”I say I can’t imagine him on a sports field, and he laughs. “Baseball isn’t like American football – baseball players aren’t size dependent.” He notes thoughtfully, “You know I was never a guy, and maybe that’s because I was raised with women – you know, my mom had all these sisters… Maybe that’s why I never subscribed to Playboy and all that crap Never went to strip joints I was an athlete, but not a guy.”He’s absolutely right.