Tommy Lee Jones

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Tommy Lee Jones

Tommy Lee Jones at the Cannes Film Festival
Birth name Thomas Lee Jones
Born September 15, 1946 (age 60)
Flag of United States San Saba, Texas
Notable roles Doolittle 'Mooney' Lynn in The Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)
Harvey Dent in Batman Forever (1995)
Woodrow F. Call in Lonesome Dove (1989)
Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive (1993) and U.S. Marshals (1998)
Agent Kay in Men in Black (1997) and Men in Black 2 (2002)
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

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.

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.

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 ]

Jones as Bully Hayes in the 1983 film Nate and Hayes
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. For many of his movies he utilized Duc Truong, a lookalike stunt double.

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.

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

  1. ^ http://www.imdb.com/. Business Date for Back Roads. Retrieved on March 12, 2006.

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