What’s it like to be married to the world’s most attractive woman? Billy Bob Thornton, the actor and Oscar-winning screenwriter who was married to Jolie from 2000 to 2003, says it’s not easy. Thornton is quick to point out that there was difficulty due to his persistent sense of insecurity about her numerous humanitarian successes and goals.

Jolie and Billy’s marriage, like Pamela and Tommy’s, was fraught with mystery. Who, after all, would wear vials of each other’s blood as necklaces in their right minds? Jolie was a wild child, and according to Chelsey Handler, she still is.

In an interview with GQ, Billy Bob Thornton discusses his three-year marriage to the Eternals star, who is now divorced from Brad Pitt.

“I never felt good enough for her,” the 61-year-old actor from Bad Santa 2 told GQ. He indicated that her ongoing zeal for global politics and humanitarian concerns contrasted with his casual lifestyle. Thornton would rather stay at home and watch a baseball game than go out.

Jolie was never judgmental of his more modest ambitions. The greater issue, according to Thornton, was that “I’m real uncomfortable around rich and important people.” And he had no desire to change his ways—“I like how I am.”

Thornton reflected on the marriage in a podcast interview for HFPA in Conversation. “I look at that time as a great time,” he said. “Angie is still a friend of mine and she’s a great person and she’s done so much.”

The actor married Jolie, who is 20 years his junior, in 2000, after meeting on the set of the 1999 film Pushing Tin. They divorced in 2003 after splitting in June 2002.

Jolie was Thornton’s fifth wife. He remarked, “I remember our time together as really being great,” he said. But if it was so great, why did it end? “We just had different lifestyles. Hers is a global lifestyle and mine is an agoraphobic lifestyle. 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.”

Despite the fact that they have been divorced for more than a decade, Thornton says that he and Jolie are still friends.

GQ’s Taffy Brodesser-Akner writes in a lovely epilogue that is rare for Hollywood marriages. “They talk every few months, she’s just so busy with the kids and work and the many houses in the many countries, but the minute they connect it’s like old times (minus phlebotomy and face gnawing).”

Thornton still has a tattoo of Angelina Jolie’s name on his calf that he hasn’t bothered to get erased, as well as one on his arm that is partially hidden by an angel. He explained, “See, it’s just resting there. You can still see the name.” During their brief but intense romance, the two notoriously wore vials of one other’s blood around their necks and admitted to having sex in the limo on the way to the 2000 MTV Movie Awards.

In an attempt to explain the blood vials, Thornton just stated that the actions he and Jolie took were “exaggerated,” but that “it wasn’t as crazy as people wrote about it.”

“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 said. “But by the time it came out in the press, it sounded like we were wearing a bucket of blood around our necks.”

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