Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an American actor and filmmaker. He has received four Academy Award nominations, winning Best Supporting Actor for his performance as U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive.

His other notable starring roles include former Texas Ranger Woodrow F. Call in the TV mini-series Lonesome Dove, Agent K in the Men in Black film series, Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men, the villain Two-Face in Batman Forever, terrorist William Strannix in Under Siege, a Texas Ranger in Man of the House, rancher Pete Perkins in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which he directed, Colonel Chester Phillips in Captain America: The First Avenger and Warden Dwight McClusky in Natural Born Killers. Jones has also portrayed real-life figures such as businessman Howard Hughes, Radical Republican Congressman Thaddeus Stevens, executed murderer Gary Gilmore, U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur, Oliver Lynn, husband of Loretta Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter, and baseball great Ty Cobb.

Early in Jones' career he first gained recognition for his contract role as Dr. Mark Toland on the soap opera One Life to Live for 6 years.

Early life

Jones as a junior in high school, 1964

Jones was born on September 15, 1946, in San Saba, Texas.^[1][2] His mother, Lucille Marie (née Scott), was a police officer, school teacher, and beauty shop owner, and his father, Clyde C. Jones, was an oil field worker.^[1] The two were married and divorced twice. He was raised in Midland, Texas^[3] and attended Robert E. Lee High School.

Jones soon moved to Dallas and graduated from the St. Mark's School of Texas,^[4] which he attended on scholarship; he now serves on the board of directors. He attended Harvard College on a need-based scholarship. He stayed in Mower B-12 as a freshman,^[5] across the hall from future Vice President Al Gore, the son of Senator Albert Gore, Sr. of Tennessee. As an upperclassman, he stayed in Dunster House^[6] with roommates Gore and Bob Somerby, who later became editor of the media criticism site the Daily Howler. Jones played offensive guard^[7] on Harvard's undefeated 1968 varsity football team, was nominated as a first-team All-Ivy League selection, and played in the 1968 Game, which featured a memorable and literally last-minute Harvard 16-point comeback to tie Yale. He recounts his memory of "the most famous football game in Ivy League history" in the documentary Harvard Beats Yale 29-29. Jones graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts in English in 1969; his senior thesis was on "the mechanics of Catholicism" in the works of Flannery O'Connor.^[8][9]

Career

Early acting and film (1960s-1980)

Jones in August 2006

Jones moved to New York to become an actor, making his Broadway debut in 1969's A Patriot for Me in a number of supporting roles. In 1970 he landed his first film role, coincidentally playing a Harvard student in Love Story (Erich Segal, the author of Love Story, said that he based the lead character of Oliver on the two undergraduate roommates he knew while attending Harvard, Jones and Gore).^[10]

In early 1971, he returned to Broadway in Abe Burrows' Four on a Garden where he shared the stage with Carol Channing and Sid Caesar. Between 1971 and 1975 he portrayed Dr. Mark Toland on the ABC soap opera, One Life to Live. He returned to the stage for a 1974 production of Ulysses in Nighttown with Zero Mostel. It was followed by the acclaimed TV movie The Amazing Howard Hughes, where he played the lead role.

In films, he played an escaped convict hunted in Jackson County Jail (1976), a Vietnam veteran in Rolling Thunder, (1977) an automobile mogul, co-starring with Laurence Olivier in the Harold Robbins drama The Betsy, and Police Detective 'John Neville' opposite Faye Dunaway in the 1978 thriller, "The Eyes of Laura Mars"

In 1980, Jones earned his first Golden Globe nomination for his portrayal of country singer Loretta Lynn's husband, Doolittle "Mooney" Lynn, in the popular Coal Miner's Daughter. In 1981 he played a drifter opposite Sally Field in Back Roads, a comedy that received middling reviews.^[11]

Increased exposure (1983-2004)

In 1983, he received an Emmy^[12] for Best Actor for his performance as murderer Gary Gilmore in a TV adaptation of Norman Mailer's The Executioner's Song. That same year he starred in a pirate adventure, Nate and Hayes, playing the heavily-bearded pirate Captain Bully Hayes.

In 1989, he earned another Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Texas Ranger lawman Woodrow F. Call in the acclaimed television mini-series Lonesome Dove, based on the best-seller by Larry McMurtry.

In the 1990s, blockbuster hits such as The Fugitive co-starring Harrison Ford, Batman Forever co-starring Val Kilmer, and Men in Black with Will Smith made Jones one of the best-paid and most in-demand actors in Hollywood. His performance as Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive received broad acclaim and an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a sequel. When he accepted his Oscar, his head was shaved for his role in the film Cobb, which he made light of in his speech: "The only thing a man can say at a time like this is 'I am not really bald'. Actually I'm lucky to be working".

Among his other well-known performances during the 1990s were those of the accused conspirator Clay Shaw/Clay Bertrand in the 1991 film JFK (which earned him another Oscar nomination), as a terrorist who hijacks a U.S. Navy battleship in Under Siege and as a maximum-security prison warden who's in way over his head in Natural Born Killers.

Jones co-starred with director Clint Eastwood as astronauts in the 2000 film Space Cowboys, in which both played retired pilots and friends/rivals leading a space rescue mission together.

Recent years (2005-present)

Jones at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival

In 2005, the first theatrical feature film Jones directed, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, was presented at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Jones's character speaks both English and Spanish in the film. His performance won him the Best Actor Award. His first film as a director had been The Good Old Boys in 1995, a made-for-television movie.

Two strong performances in 2007 marked a resurgence in Jones's career, one as a beleaguered father investigating the disappearance of his soldier son in In the Valley of Elah, the other as a Texas sheriff hunting an assassin in the Oscar-winning No Country for Old Men. For the former, he was nominated for an Academy Award.

Jones has been a spokesperson for Japanese brewing company Suntory since 2006. He can be seen in various Japanese TV commercials of Suntory's Coffee brand Boss as a character called "Alien Jones," an extraterrestrial who takes the form of a human being to check on the world of humans. There are 34 such commercials, many of which can be seen on YouTube.^[13] In 2011, Jones appeared in public service announcements on Japanese television, joining a number of other popular figures who sang two sentimental songs in remembrance of those lost in the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.

In 2010, Jones appeared alongside Ben Affleck in the recession drama The Company Men. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where early reviews praised Jones's performance as "pitch-perfect."^[14] Jones had a role in the Marvel Studios film, Captain America: The First Avenger.^[15] He also directed, produced and co-starred with Samuel L. Jackson in an adaptation of The Sunset Limited.

In 2012 there was another turning point in Jones's career, starting in a reprisal of his role as Agent K in Men in Black 3, the romantic dramedy Hope Springs, and co-starring as Thaddeus Stevens in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln. Jones's performance in Lincoln received wide critical acclaim. For this performance, Jones received his fourth Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Actor.

Personal life

Jones was married to Kate Lardner, the daughter of screenwriter and journalist Ring Lardner Jr., from 1971 to 1978. He has two children from his second marriage to Kimberlea Cloughley, the daughter of Phil Hardberger, former mayor of San Antonio: Austin Leonard (born 1982) and Victoria Kafka (born 1991). On March 19, 2001, he married his third wife, Dawn Laurel.

Jones resides in Terrell Hills, Texas, a suburb of San Antonio, and speaks fluent Spanish.^[16] He owns a 3000-acre cattle ranch in San Saba County, Texas,^[17] and a ranch near Van Horn, Texas, which served as the set for his film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. He also owns a home and farm in polo mecca Wellington, Florida. Jones is a polo player and he has a house in a polo country club in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He is a supporter of the Polo Training Foundation.^[18] He is an avid San Antonio Spurs fan; he is often seen court-side at Spurs games. At the 2000 Democratic National Convention, he presented the nominating speech for his college roommate, Al Gore, as the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States.

Filmography

Film

Television

Awards and nominations

See also

• Notable alumni of St. Mark's School of Texas

References

Further reading

• Grunert, Andrea, "Les bons et les méchants selon Tommy Lee Jones", in: Francis Bordat et Serge Chauvin (eds.) Les bons et les méchants Université Paris X, 2005, p. 339–352, ISBN 2-907335-30-8

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tommy Lee Jones.

• Tommy Lee Jones at the Internet Movie Database
• Tommy Lee Jones at the Internet Broadway Database
  
• Tommy Lee Jones at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
• Tommy Lee Jones at the TCM Movie Database
  
• Tommy Lee Jones at Box Office Mojo
• Tommy Lee Jones at AllMovie