Photo Source: Jason Merritt/Getty Images
Where You May Have Seen Him
Thornton has made appearances on shows such as "Alias" and "Lie to Me," but he is most often recognized as the screenwriter who claims to be the grandson of the inventor of the Cobb salad on "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Says Thornton, "I'll be at a movie or something and people will say, 'You're him! You're the Cobb salad guy!' Once I was crossing a street in Times Square with about a thousand other people and I just heard someone yell, 'Cobb salad!' "
On the Stage
In addition to his work in "Waiting for Godot" opposite Mark Ruffalo, Thornton has played Hamlet and appeared in several plays by John Belluso. After performing in Belluso's "The Body of Bourne" at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, Thornton made his Off-Broadway debut in "Pyretown" in a role Belluso wrote for him. After the playwright died in 2006, New York's Public Theater staged his unfinished play "The Poor Itch" in 2008 with Thornton in the lead role of an Iraq War veteran.
Looking for Healing
Thornton admits he had personal experience to draw on when playing faith healer Dean O'Dwyer in "Sympathy for Delicious." After his accident, Thornton went to several "born-again miracle services," he says. "I was just out of my mind, like anybody is when you have something like this happen. You name it, I tried it, whether it was Eastern, Christian, Jewish, holistic, reiki. They were crazy places. You had the tent-show charlatan preacher, who is easy to spot, but there were others where you're there and you think it might be real. When you're sitting there, needing a healing, you get really caught up in it. Eventually I came back to my senses and got on with my life—and then I just mined it all for a script."
Writing What You Know
Thornton had sold a script before "Sympathy for Delicious," an untitled dark action adventure that he began before his accident and hoped to star in. Now he sees himself as "an actor who writes" and recognizes that he can create great roles for himself. "I really want to get as much acting out of my system as I can—but in really good parts, and that's where there's a problem, because nobody's writing parts like Dean O'Dwyer for me," he says. "But I don't want to be writing parts for myself to play 20 years from now. I'd love to work with other writers and develop stories, and I'm interested in directing too." Currently he is at work on two scripts with roles for himself: one a lead, one supporting.
Final Credits
Thornton, who also teaches classes at the Stella Adler Academy in L.A., spent more than 10 years trying to get "Sympathy for Delicious" made. So how does he feel now that it's finally hitting theaters? "I kind of can't believe it, to be honest with you," he says. "For so long it seemed like it might not even happen. I'm just pinching myself every day."
