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Billy Bob Thornton talked about his past with his ex-wife Angelina Jolie in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Asked about "vials of blood" which he and Angelina became infamous for in the early 2000s, Billy replied, "I mean it was a crazy time. I've never been fond of it."

He explained, "[A] vial of blood is very simple. Angie came home one day with a kit she bought. You know those lockets you buy that are clear and you put a picture of your grannie in it or something like that and wear it around your neck? That's what it was. She bought two of those. We were apart a lot because she's off making 'Tomb Raider' and I'm making 'Monster's Ball'. We were on opposite ends, we see each other for two weeks and whatever."

"She thought it would be interesting and romantic if we took a little razorblade and sliced our fingers, smeared a little blood on these lockets and you wear it around your neck just like you wear your son or daughter's baby hair in one. Same thing. From that we were wearing quart jars of blood around our necks," the "Fargo" star joked, "And we were vampires and we lived in a dungeon."

While rumors said there was a dungeon in his house, Billy insisted, "We did not have a dungeon." He then explained about the dungeon, "I mean, it had some basis in fact. We had a basement which I had a recording studio in. So when I tell a journalist I stay down in the dungeon all the time, you know, recording music, they don't hear 'recording music,' they hear 'dungeon.' You know, because it makes a better story."

During the interview, Billy also opened up about his abusive childhood. Talking about recent issues about NFL star Adrian Peterson and his alleged child abuse case, Billy admitted he received daily beatings from his father.

He shared, "There's a thing in the news right now about an NFL player who took a switch to his kid and there's a lot of trouble over that right now, and it's so bizarre, you know, watching that. I mean I can't imagine laying a finger on my kids. I go the other way, probably because my father was so abusive."

"But in terms of the switching, I mean I got it daily," he continued, "And that's something you guys, there are a few things that I grew up with that you guys will never have to go through and maybe you have gone through it, I don't know, but one of them is not only did you get beat up at home if you had a dad like mine, and that was standard issue. This wasn't like my dad in particular was an a**, I mean this was like everybody's dad."

Billy added, "If you were over at somebody else's house and you did something wrong their dad may beat your a**. I mean it was crazy. And at school we got whipped at school. I always got whipped at school because they gave you a choice, you could get 10 licks with whatever implement that teacher preferred or you could be suspended for three days. I would always pick the licking because if I got suspended what I would get form my dad was so much worse than what they gave you at school."