Billy Bob Thornton 'Happy' He Didn't Become Famous at a Young Age: 'Who Knows If I'd Even Be Here Now'

Billy Bob Thornton has no regrets about the trajectory of his career.

In a new interview, the actor insisted that though he started in showbiz when he was young, he's "happy" that he didn't become "well known or successful" until he hit his 30s.

"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," the multifaceted star, 69, confessed.

"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," Thornton 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."

Added the father-of-four, "And I think if I had been nominated for an Academy Award when I was 21, who knows what I would have done with it?"

Thornton's fame hit a peak in the early 2000s due to his headline-making romance with Angelina Jolie, 49, who's two decades his junior — though he insisted the rumors about their wild antics were exaggerated.

"It wasn’t as crazy as people wrote about it," he insisted on the "HFPA in Conversation" podcast, then explaining the exes' infamous blood necklaces.

"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.’ It was that easy," he spilled. "But by the time it came out in the press, it sounded like we were wearing a bucket of blood around our necks."

"I look at that time as a great time," he said of being married to the mother-of-six from 2000 to 2003. "Angie is still a friend of mine and she’s a great person and she’s done so much."

"The movies she makes are still things that are important to her," noted Thornton. "Whether they succeed or fail, she still does what she believes in. And I’ll always respect her for that."

The Bad Santa lead said their split came down to their "different lifestyles."

"Hers is a global lifestyle and mine is an agoraphobic lifestyle," he confessed. "So, that’s really — that’s the only reason we’re probably not still together, maybe, because of a different path in life we wanted to take."

In 2014, he married sixth wife Connie Angland, 60.

Fox News spoke to Thornton.