Billy Bob Thornton Reveals the Extreme Step He Took to Stay Close to His Daughter in College

Billy Bob Thornton is doing everything he can to stay close to his youngest daughter as she enters the next chapter of her life.

In a recent interview on the Today Show, Thornton revealed how he and his wife, Connie Angland, are maintaining their status as helicopter parents as their daughter, Bella Thornton, navigates college.

After proudly revealing that she is attending California Polytechnic State University, Thornton began to discuss what the transition of her going to college has been like so far.

Thornton's main priority was making sure that he and his wife could always be close by for Bella while she's in school.

"We are what they call helicopter parents, kind of, I guess," he shared in the interview. "So, we got a house up there. She's 12 minutes from the campus."

"So she can come home and do her laundry?" Today Show anchor Savannah Guthrie asked him.

"Oh, she lives there," Thornton then clarified with a smile.

"That's helicopter parenting to the next level," Guthrie remarked, to which Thornton responded with a chuckle, "It is, yeah."

Bella is Thornton's youngest child and his only child with his wife of 11 years.

Thornton has three other children from his past relationships: Amanda Brumfield, 46, William Thornton, 32, and Harry James Thornton, 31.

Thornton has been married six times in his life.

Less than two years after they met in May 2003, Thornton and Angland welcomed Bella into the world in September 2004.

In a July 2008 interview with Maxim, Thornton said he had no plans to marry Angland because he wanted to avoid public scrutiny after having been married and divorced so many times.

"I told Connie I didn't want to put her through that. We do fine. We've been together for four years now. We have a child together," he said in the interview at the time. "If we get married, then the press will start calling her 'Number Six.'"

However, a few years later, the couple changed their minds and married in a small, quiet ceremony on October 22, 2014. Even then, they kept the news from the public until February 2015.

"We did it for [Bella], really," Thornton explained on The Late Late Show with James Corden in October 2015. "Because after a while, it was like, 'Why aren't my mommy and daddy married after 12 years?'"

Now, they are still happily together and navigating life as the parents of a college student together.