Billy Bob Thornton Says Hollywood ‘Wasn’t Nice’ to Taylor Sheridan Before He Found ‘Ranch Community’ in Texas

Even Taylor Sheridan’s closest collaborators realized Hollywood wasn’t for him. Billy Bob Thornton says Taylor Sheridan was embraced in Texas after Hollywood was tough on him, noting the ‘Yellowstone’ creator “is the real thing.”

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Taylor Sheridan struggled early in his career, experiencing homelessness and living in his car for six months

After finding success with Yellowstone, Sheridan returned to Texas and purchased the 600-acre Bosque Ranch

Sheridan now invites stars like Helen Mirren to his ranch to connect with the setting before filming his projects

Even Taylor Sheridan‘s closest collaborators realized Hollywood wasn’t for him.

“Hollywood wasn’t nice to Taylor,” Billy Bob Thornton, who stars in Sheridan’s Landman drama series, tells Town & Country. “There’s something about being an outsider that drives you. I think the ranch community in Texas accepted Taylor 100 percent because he’s not phoning it in.”

The actor, 71, adds: “He doesn’t go to the tourist cowboy shop and get an outfit. This is the real thing.”

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The Fort Worth, Texas, native, 56, traveled out West early in his career as he attempted to make it as an actor. However, his success wasn’t immediate. “I was homeless twice,” Sheridan told the outlet. “I lived in my car.” He would sometimes escape to Ojai, Calif., which he said was “somewhere where I could safely sleep” in the car.

“I did that for six months,” he recalled. “I could have decided at any point, ‘I’m going to go get a full-time job and I’m going to give up this dream.’ And I chose to sleep in my car over that.”

At age 38, he landed a role as a cop in Sons of Anarchy, but after three seasons, he pivoted to writing. After selling his script for Hell or High Water, he was able to purchase a “little house on an acre on a river in Wyoming” — his wife Nicole Muirbrook’s home state.

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Further success led him to buy additional land and a “couple horses.” Following the critical acclaim for his series Yellowstone, Sheridan returned to Texas and purchased the 600-acre Bosque Ranch outside Fort Worth.

Sheridan says his aversion to city life is reflected in his writing and the characters he brings to life on screen, as seen in Mayor of Kingstown: “Here’s a guy in a place that he hates, attempting to hold this place together instead of leaving… That, to me, was pretty autobiographical, because there I was stuck in L.A. That’s what that was.”

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Today, Sheridan doesn’t go to L.A. unless he needs to. But he says, for the most part, “I don’t leave the ranch.”

Instead, Sheridan often invites the A-list stars cast in his shows to explore the Texas property before filming begins.

“He said, ‘Come visit me in Texas and I will tell you the story,’ ” Michelle Pfeiffer, who stars in The Madison, said. “I spoke to Helen Mirren, and I’m like, ‘Okay, what’s up with this?’ She said, ‘No, it’s great. Go!’ ”

Mirren said of her own visit to the ranch before joining the cast of 1923: “It was quite an adventure for me, because I’d never been anywhere like that and had hardly ever been to Texas… It was quite a culture shock for a foreigner to land in that heartland.”

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Now, Sheridan spends his mornings tending to the horses before going to the gym to “work on me.” But Bosque Ranch also has editing bays where he works with his teams to assemble shows. Typically, writing and editing take up the latter portion of Sheridan’s days. “Then the rest is dedicated to whatever the problems du jour are,” he says.

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