Actress Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton attend the world premiere of “Original Sin” on July 31, 2001 at the Director’s Guild Theater in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Ron Galella, Ltd./WireImage)

Next to Pamela and Tommy, Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton’s marriage was one of intrigue. Who, after all, in their right minds cruised around with vials of each other’s blood as necklaces? Jolie seemed a wild child – and if you ask Chelsey Handler, she still is.

But since splitting from her latest husband Brad Pitt, the intrigue-o-metre has gone into overdrive. What is it really like to be married to Angelina Jolie? Thankfully Thornton is talking.

In a podcast interview for HFPA in Conversation, Thornton, 62, reflected upon his three-year marriage to Jolie, 43. “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 pair met in 1999 on the set of Pushing Tin and were married from 2000 to 2003. Jolie was Thornton’s fifth wife (red flag, anybody?).  “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.”

Attempting to explain the vials of blood, Thornton simply said the things he and Jolie did were “exaggerated” but insisted “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.”