'Tommy Lee Jones' (born
September 15,
1946) is an
Academy Award-winning
American actor and
director.
Biography
Early life
Jones was born in
San Saba, Texas to Clyde C. Jones, an oil field worker, and Lucille Marie (Scott), a police officer, school teacher, and beauty shop owner;
[1] the two were married and divorced twice. Jones, an eighth-generation Texan, has a
Cherokee Native American grandparent.
[2] He was a resident of
Midland, Texas and attended the same high school,
Robert E. Lee High School, as the
First Lady Laura Bush.
Jones graduated from the
St. Mark's School of Texas (where he is now on the board of directors) and attended
Harvard on a scholarship, where he lived in Mower B-12 as a freshman, across the hall from future
Vice President Al Gore. As an upperclassman, he was roommates with Gore and
John Lithgow in
Dunster House. Jones played
offensive tackle on Harvard's undefeated
1968 varsity football team, was nominated as a first-team All-
Ivy League selection, and played in the memorable and literal last-minute Harvard sixteen-point comeback
blitz to tie Yale in the 1968
Game. Jones graduated
cum laude with a degree in English in
1969.
[3]
Career
Jones then moved to
New York City to become an actor. He started acting on
Broadway and in television. He made his debut in movies in ''
Love Story'', in
1970 (Erich Segal, the author of "Love Story" has said that he based the lead character of Oliver on the two undergrad roommates he knew while teaching at Harvard, Jones and Al Gore.). Between
1971 and
1975, he portrayed
Dr. Mark Toland on the
ABC soap opera, ''
One Life to Live'', and then he played the role of an escaped convict who was hunted down by the police in ''
Jackson County Jail'' (
1976). In 1978, he starred opposite
Sir Laurence Olivier in
The Betsy.
In 1981, he played a drifter opposite
Sally Field in ''
Back Roads'', a comedy that received middling reviews and grossed $11 million at the box office.
[4] In 1983, he received an
Emmy for Best Actor for his performance as murderer
Gary Gilmore in a TV adaptation of
Norman Mailer's ''
The Executioner's Song''. In the same year he also starred in pirate adventure ''
Nate and Hayes'', playing the heavily bearded
Captain Bully Hayes. Despite being a film that was largely forgotten due to the unspectacular title, interest has recently been rekindled thanks to the
Pirates of the Caribbean films.
Jones as Bully Hayes in the 1983 film ''Nate and Hayes''
In the 1990s, movies such as ''
The Fugitive'' co-starring
Harrison Ford, ''
Batman Forever'' co-starring
Val Kilmer, and ''
Men in Black'' with
Will Smith brought him tens of millions of dollars and made him one of the top actors of
Hollywood. His role in ''The Fugitive'' won him wide acclaim and an
Academy Award for
Best Supporting Actor. When he accepted his
Oscar, his head was
shaved for his role in the film ''
Cobb,'' a situation he made light of in his speech by saying "All a man can say at a time like this is 'I am not really bald.'"
In
2005, he released his first feature-film ''
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada'', that was presented at the
2005 Cannes Film Festival. It won him the
Best Actor Award. His first film as director was in 1995, a made-for-television movie.
Personal life
At the
2000 Democratic National Convention, he nominated his college roommate,
Al Gore, as the
Democratic Party's nominee for
President of the United States.
Jones has two children from his second marriage to
Kimberlea Cloughey: Victoria Kafka (born 1991) and Austin Leonard (born 1982). He was married to Kate Lardner, the daughter of
Ring Lardner Jr. from 1971 to 1978. On
March 19,
2001, he married his third wife, Dawn Laurel.
Jones resides in
Terrell Hills, Texas, a community in
San Antonio.
Filmography
References
1. http://www.filmreference.com/film/98/Tommy-Lee-Jones.html
2. http://www.ericokeefe.com/wdranch.php
3. http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=36238&mod=bio
4. http://www.imdb.com/
External links
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