Tommy Lee Jones

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Tommy Lee Jones
Image:Tommy Lee Cannes.jpg Tommy Lee Jones at the Cannes Film Festival
Birth name	Thomas Lee Jones
Born	September 15 1946 (age 62) San Saba, Texas
Awards Academy Awards Won: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (1994) for The Fugitive Nominated: Best Actor in a Supporting Role (1992) for JFK Emmy Awards Won: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Special (1983) for The Executioner's Song Nominated: Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Special (1989) for Lonesome Dove

Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an Oscar-winning American actor and director.

Contents 1 Biography 1.1 Early life 1.2 Graduation 1.3 Career 1.4 Private life 2 Filmography 3 References 3.1 Footnotes 3.2 External links

Biography

Early life

Jones was born in San Saba, Texas to Clyde C. Jones, who worked in the oil fields of both Texas and Libya, and Lucille Marie Scott, who was a police officer and hairdresser who owned a beauty parlour; the two were married and divorced twice. Jones, an eighth-generation Texan, has a Cherokee Native American grandparent, and is mostly of Welsh ancestry. Jones was also a resident of Midland, Texas, and attended the same high school as the First Lady Laura Bush.

Graduation

Jones graduated 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.

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. Gore brought this up during the 2000 Presidential campaign). 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.^[1]

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. ^{[dubious — see talk page]}

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. For many of his movies he utilized Duc Truong, a lookalike stunt double.

Private 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

• One Life to Live (1968)
• Love Story (1970)
• Life Study (1973)
• Eliza's Horoscope (1975)
• Charlie's Angels (1976) (TV)
• Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976) (TV)
• Jackson County Jail (1976)
• The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977) (TV)
• Rolling Thunder (1977)
• The Betsy (1978)
• Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)
• Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)
• Barn Burning (1980) (TV)
• Back Roads (1981)
• The Executioner's Song (1982) (TV)
• The Rainmaker (1982) (TV)
• Nate and Hayes (1983) (aka Savage Islands)
• The River Rat (1984)
• Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1985) (TV)
• The Park Is Mine (1986) (TV)
• Black Moon Rising (1986)
• Yuri Nosenko, KGB (1986) (TV)
• Broken Vows (1987) (TV)
• The Big Town (1987)
• Stranger on My Land (1988) (TV)
• April Morning (film)April Morning (1988) (TV)
• Stormy Monday (1988)
• Gotham (1988) (TV)
• Lonesome Dove (1989)
• The Package (1989)
• Fire Birds (1990)
• JFK (1991)
• Under Siege (1992)
• Heaven & Earth (1993)
• House of Cards (1993)
• The Fugitive (1993)
• Blown Away (1994)
• The Client (1994)
• Natural Born Killers (1994)
• Blue Sky (1994)
• Cobb (1994)
• The Good Old Boys (1995) (TV) (director)
• Batman Forever (1995)
• Volcano (1997)
• Men in Black (1997)
• U.S. Marshals (1998)
• Small Soldiers (1998) (voice)
• Double Jeopardy (1999)
• Rules of Engagement (2000)
• Space Cowboys (2000)
• Men in Black II (2002)
• The Hunted (2003)
• The Missing (2003)
• Man of the House (2005)
• The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005) (director)
• A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
• No Country for Old Men (2007)

Preceded by Billy Dee Williams	Actors to portray Harvey Dent/Two-Face 1995-2008	Succeeded by Aaron Eckhart
Preceded by Gene Hackman for Unforgiven	Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor 1993 for The Fugitive	Succeeded by Martin Landau for Ed Wood

References

Footnotes

Wikipedia information about Tommy Lee Jones This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Tommy Lee Jones". It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer). Help contribute to Americola and edit this article.