Billy Bob, Madsen, and Comfort Food

Comfort food of days gone by is preferred topic
Friday, March 2, 2007

By Dixie Reid

SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE

Billy Bob Thornton, born and raised in Arkansas, lived for a while as a young man in Tomball, Texas. In those days, the town was known for a cafe that served chicken-fried steak in two sizes: dinner-plate and serving-platter (the latter favored by highway road crews and construction workers).

Thornton never ate at Goodson's Cafe because, as a struggling musician, he had no money for fine dining.

The mention of the legendary restaurant gets him talking about food - even though he and co-star Virginia Madsen are on tour to talk about The Astronaut Farmer.

"I was so broke then," Thornton says, "that the only fried chicken I ever had was in a Swanson's TV dinner. It came with mashed potatoes, with that little thing of butter in the middle, and that little cobbler thing."

Madsen laughs. "My mom would get so mad at us when we wanted one of those TV dinners, but she would finally give in."

She and her brother, actor Michael Madsen, grew up in Chicago and rarely were allowed "junk" food. However, she recently introduced her 12-year-old son, Jack, to chicken potpies from the grocer's freezer case.

"I love chicken potpie," Thornton says. "You know who has a good chicken potpie? Marie Callender's."

"We haven't had the 'real' one in the restaurant," she says.

"It's so good and like 72,000 calories," he says, grinning. "It's pure butter."

"It's real comfort food," she says. "I bet there's lard in the crust."

"Speaking of lard," Thornton says. "one of my favorite things to tell about my family when I (was) growing up was that we were pretty poor, and whatever brand name there was, we had the one that was a few cents cheaper. So everybody used Crisco, right? We used a thing called Snowdrift. And you know, to this day, I like Miracle Whip better than mayonnaise. In Arkansas, we didn't have BLTs. We just had bacon-and-tomato, no lettuce, on white bread, with Miracle Whip."

Madsen shakes her head. "My mom would never let us eat anything like that. She was really strict about us eating healthy, and once in a while she'd give in. My parents were both really good cooks. He was a fireman, and he cooked at the station, so he knew how to cook really well. I'd go fishing with my dad, and he'd grill the fish beautifully."

"Like steak," Thornton says out of the blue. "The only steak I ever had, and this is true, I never had a regular, thick sirloin. We only had cubed steaks. You know, pounded steaks. And my mother would put flour on them and fry them in the skillet.

"I was telling Virginia the other night, I never had a piece of salmon, like a salmon steak, until I moved to California. The only salmon I knew anything about was from a can, the stuff they made salmon patties out of. That's all we ever had."

Madsen shakes her head, laughing.

Before being cast as husband and wife in The Astronaut Farmer, Madsen and Thornton never met. They knew many of the same people, and Thornton co-starred with Madsen's brother in three movies.

"It seemed like such a tragedy that we didn't know each other, because now that we do, I consider her a great friend," Thornton says. "And it looks good onscreen. We look married onscreen. You know, she started to flirt with me the minute she met me."

Madsen laughs. "I was only responding to how you winked at me."

"Yeah, I did start it," Thornton says with a grin.

"You wanted to take me to Applebee's for dinner, and I thought that was so adorable," she says.