Billy Bob Thornton Flies Off the Handle During CBC 'Q' Interview

In an attempt to pull the focus away from his acting career, Oscar winner Billy Bob Thornton bizarrely changed gears in an interview that he had allegedly requested to center solely on his band, the Boxmasters.

Ironically, instead of promoting the Boxmasters, Thornton inadvertently turned the interview into an awkward display of childish conduct, which left listeners puzzled, and left Jian Ghomeshi (the host of Q on Canada's CBC Radio One) struggling to keep the interview afloat.

The interview quickly turned sour within the first 60 seconds, when Ghomeshi briefly referenced Thornton's movie career during the band's introduction. A petulant Thornton then clearly withdrew from the interview by responding to each question with, "I don't know..." and by going off on lengthy, irrelevant tangents about magazines he subscribed to as a child.

Ghomeshi turned to Thornton's bemused, and perhaps slightly embarrassed band members, who graciously filled in the blanks when the band's lead singer refused a response. But then approximately 7 minutes into the excruciatingly painful interview, Thornton was finally confronted by the radio show host when the awkwardness could no longer be ignored.

"The producer was instructed [not to mention the acting career]," Thornton alleged, to which Ghomeshi defended, "I was just giving context [so the listeners would know who you are]."

According to Thornton's publicist, Arnold Robinson, Ghomeshi was never instructed to avoid mentioning the movie career, although he did express that Thornton does not like to be asked about his "other occupation" while promoting his band.

All of Ghomeshi's questions were on the subject of the Boxmasters, only the introduction touched on Thornton's cinematic background.

Whether or not it was a misunderstanding, Thornton managed to display an over inflated ego too large for the CBC to accommodate, and by doing so, the actor/musician did a great disservice to his band. Declining to perform along with his band members at the end of the interview, Thornton said the band would be playing an instrumental version since he doesn't "cart his drums around at six o'clock in the morning."

So if Thornton's intention was to exclusively promote his band, he may have gone about it in the right manner - although now the Boxmasters may want to refill, or at least re-think, the position of their lead singer/ drummer.