Now she says she wants "to reach people to bring awareness of domestic violence."
To hear her story of Billy Bob's Oscar-or-else tyranny, don't turn to Barbara Walters, or even the daytime talk shows. No, this story is going to be told in text wrapped around the nude color photos of Pietra published in January's Playboy.
Pietra, 27, split from Billy Bob in April, taking the couple's two kids, Willie, 4, and Harry James, 3, to her Malibu, California, home. She filed for divorce and got a restraining order against the filmmaker. He's got one against her, too. (An intermediary picks up and drops off the kids.)
Pietra is spending time these days writing her autobiography, which might be similar to her Playboy article--full of dished dirt on Billy Bob. Like the time he told her to go home from an Oscar party early in the morning because he had to hit the talk-show circuit later that day. (As soon as Pietra left, Billy Bob reportedly headed to the bedroom with Laura Dern.)
But maybe you don't care about any of that stuff. You just want to see chest spillage--the kind Pietra showed last spring in her Oscar-night gown.
Well, sir, them 'taters have been altered--she admits having surgery to firm them up. (Okay, so maybe her body wasn't all God-given.) And sure, Billy Bob paid for the surgery, but the saggy situation was all his fault, she says.
"If I would try to stop [breast-feeding], he would say I was a bad mother," she claims. (Thornton's camp has declined comment on Pietra's comments.)
And, again, she doesn't want you to get any ideas just because she's having pictures taken of her with no clothes on by a national magazine, to be seen by at least a few readers who don't look at the book for the articles.
"Believe it or not, I'm a very devoted Christian woman," Pietra explained to USA Today. "I probably read the Bible more than most pastors. All I talk about in the house with my kids is Jesus. They don't watch TV, only Christian videos."