Tommy Lee Jones Bio

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Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an American actor and director. He is best known for his appearances as Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive and U.S. Marshals, Two-Face in Batman Forever, as Agent K in the Men in Black films, as Woodrow F. Call in the Lonesome Dove series and as Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country for Old Men.

Tommy Lee Jones: Early life

Jones was born in San Saba, Texas, the son of Lucille Marie (née Scott), a police officer, school teacher, and beauty shop owner, and Clyde C. Jones, an oil field worker; the two were married and divorced twice. Jones, an eighth-generation Texan, has a Cherokee grandparent. He was a resident of Midland, Texas and attended Robert E. Lee High School.

Jones graduated from the St. Mark's School of Texas, where he is now on the board of directors, and attended Harvard on a need-based scholarship, staying 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 Bob Somerby, who later became editor of the media criticism site the Daily Howler. Another actor who rose to prominence, John Lithgow, also lived 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 to tie Yale in the 1968 Game. Jones graduated cum laude with a degree in English in 1969.

Tommy Lee Jones: Career

Jones moved to New York City to become an actor, making his Broadway debut in the 1969 play A Patriot for Me where he portrayed a number of supporting roles. In 1970, he landed his first film role, playing a Harvard student in Love Story (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 Gore). 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 again in the 1974 Broadway production of Ulysses in Nighttown with Zero Mostel. He then played the role of an escaped convict who was hunted down by the police in Jackson County Jail (1976). In 1977 he co-starred in Rolling Thunder and in 1978 he starred with Sir Laurence Olivier in The Betsy.

In 1980, Jones earned his first Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of Doolittle 'Mooney' Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. 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. 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. In 1989, he earned another Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Woodrow F. Call in the mini-series Lonesome Dove.

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. 1991 brought him his first Academy Award nomination for JFK. 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 the first theatrical feature film he directed, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which was presented at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. In it, Jones regularly speaks Spanish. It won him the Best Actor Award. His first film as director was in 1995, a made-for-television movie. Two strong performances in 2007 have marked a resurgence in Jones' career, with his portrayal of a beleaguered father looking for his son in In the Valley of Elah and as a sheriff hunting an assassin in the critically acclaimed No Country for Old Men. For the former, he was nominated for an Academy Award.

Jones has also become a spokesperson for popular Japanese brewing company Suntory since April 2006. He can be seen in various Japanese TV commercials of Suntory's Coffee brand BOSS as a character "Alien Jones", an extraterrestrial who takes the form of a human being to check on the world of humans. There are 18 such commercials that can be seen on Youtube.

Tommy Lee Jones: Personal life

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.

Jones was married to Kate Lardner, the daughter of Ring Lardner Jr. from 1971 to 1978. Jones has two children from his second marriage to Kimberlea Cloughley, the daughter of Phil Hardberger, the 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 town near San Antonio. He reportedly owns a large ranch in San Saba County, Texas off Chappell Hill Road. He also owns another ranch near Van Horn, Texas which served as the set for Jones' film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada.

Tommy Lee Jones: Film and television credits