What if I told you that Billy Bob Thornton and Johnny Cash were good friends? Long before Billy Bob was the star of the hit Paramount+ show Landman, he was broke and trying to make it as either a musician or an actor. Thornton moved to California in the 1980s originally trying to make it in music. When things weren’t progressing, he decided to try out a little acting gig on the side. For his first job, which just required him to say one line, he was paid over $350. From that point on, he knew he wanted to be an actor. Though that realization didn’t immediately translate to success in Hollywood. Thornton flip-flopped between acting and playing music in the late 1980s and early 90s in an effort to just stay afloat financially. When one potential career path slowed, he pivoted and went to the other. It’s hard to imagine the actor known for such classic films as Sling Blade and Bad Santa was struggling to get his foot in the door, but like many that chase the dream of becoming a movie star, Thornton’s life wasn’t all glitz and glamor initially. When he started to break through a bit in acting and making music, he was fortunate enough to meet the legendary Johnny Cash after Thornton’s 2003 film U-Turn caught the country music artist’s attention. Their relationship started with a simple phone call, and blossomed into occasional visits when the movie star made trips to Nashville, Tennessee. Billy Bob detailed some of those visits in a recent interview with The Guardian. The 69-year-old actor has met a plethora of high-profile individuals over the years, but the one person that always got the nerves going when he saw him was the “Man in Black.” Cash would let Thornton stay in his home, and the Landman star says he was always a nervous wreck when he stayed with the legendary artist: “I never got over being nervous around Johnny Cash because it was like God walked in the room. I stayed at his house a couple of times and I did not want to get caught in my drawers looking in his refrigerator. So I just stayed in my room all night long. But he was very kind to me. We did a duet together of one of his songs, ‘I Still Miss Someone,’ that I’ve never put out.” A Billy Bob Thornton and Johnny Cash duet exists? That simply has to see the light of day. Thornton went on to talk more about their collaboration, saying that he and Johnny talked over a plan for the song… and at one point, Cash passionately indicated that he might have a couple of notes on the song that he wrote himself: “Cash said to me, ‘What’s your idea, son?’ And I said, ‘Well, I thought we’d do the first verse and bridge and then you could do your recitation.’ This was at a point where Johnny was in a little more ill health. And I said, ‘Then you do the recitation and then we’ll come back and do the last verse and bridge.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, that sounds good to me.’ And then he said, ‘I might even have an idea or two myself. After all I wrote the f**king thing.’ And I was like, ‘Yes, sir, sorry.'” What an incredible Johnny Cash story. And it didn’t stop there. Before that day was over, Johnny Cash apparently wrote up a story and ended up giving it to Billy Bob Thornton. The “Folsom Prison Blues” singer then signed the document at the bottom three different ways, and explained to the young actor that he did so for a very beneficial reason: “He wrote a story about that day on four pieces of notebook paper. It was partly truth, partly fiction. And on the last page are three autographs by him: ‘John R Cash,’ ‘Johnny Cash,’ ‘John Cash.’ And I said, ‘John, why did you write three autographs on that paper?’ He says, ‘Son, if you ever get broke, cut those into three pieces and you’ll be all right.'” All I know is that the world needs to hear this Billy Bob Thornton and Johnny Cash duet that’s mentioned in this story. Obviously the original version is one of Cash’s greatest hits… but I can’t be the only one thinking that a collab between Johnny and Billy Bob would be worth a listen, right? “I Still Miss Someone” The post ‘Landman’ Star Billy Bob Thornton Says He Never Stopped Being Nervous Around Johnny Cash: “It Was Like God Walked In The Room” first appeared on Whiskey Riff.