Biography

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Biography Category
Detail of Biography - Tommy Lee Jones
Name :
Tommy Lee Jones
Date :
Views :
604
Category :
Birth Date :
15/09/1946
Birth Place :
in San Saba, Texas.
Death Date :
-
Biography - Tommy Lee Jones
Tommy Lee Jones is an artist par excellence, with some interesting facts and features about him.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


He has also worked with his father in the oil fields.
Tommy Lee Jones never went to any action school.
He played football with an ambition to play in the National Football League (NFL).[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

He is a skilled polo player and also raises polo ponies. His team recently won the US Polo Association’s Western Challenge Cup (1993). Jones invites the best polo players from the Harvard University to his ranch each fall for practice.
Jones is also a cattle-rancher and owns a 3000-acre ranch near San Antonio, Texas.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

He is good friends with : Al Gore, Willie Nelson, Gary Busey, Oliver Stone, and Robert Duvall.
Ten days after graduation from Harvard, he landed his first role in the Broadway play, A Patriot for me.
According to Erich Segal, the author of Love Story, Jones and his then Harvard roommate Al Gore, were the models for the character of Oliver in the movie Love Story.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

His real life son, Austin Leonard Jones, played his son in the TV movie, Yuri Nosenko, KGB.
On October 30, 1998, Jones survived an injury after falling from his horse.
He admits having loved playing the lead in William Shakespeare’s Coriolanus at school. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]

He himself wrote most of his memorable lines in films : The Fugitive: …when Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) tells Marshal Gerard (Jones), "I didn’t kill my wife," Gerard replies, "I don’t care !." Under Siege: … William Strannix’s speech after he loses his mind : "Saturday morning cartoons. This little piggy…." Eyes of Laura Mars: … John Neville’s revealing speech at the end of the movie.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

Born on September 15, 1946, in San Saba, Texas, Tommy Lee Jones was the only child of Clyde Jones, a cowboy turned oil-field worker. His mother, Lucille Marie Jones, was a policewoman, beautician and school teacher – all rolled into one.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]Jones[/b] underwent a lot of trauma as an adolescent. His parents were married and divorced twice. Jones’ father worked on oil rigs and underwater construction. He often abused Jones. By the time Tommy Lee became a teenager, his father had divorced his mother for the second time and settled in Libya, North Africa, with plans for his son to follow suit. Jones, a 98-pound seventh grader, worked hard to secure a scholarship at the prestigious St. Mark’s School, Texas to stay in the United States. Jones’ dogged determination made him succeed.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


A talented football player and a good student, he managed to win a football scholarship to Harvard University in Cambridge,[br /]
Massachusetts. His roommate for all four years at Harvard was Al Gore, a future United States
senator, who became the vice president and presidential candidate. Jones, who now was a star football player and also an English literature major, became an All-Ivy offensive guard on the football team.
An appearance in a student production of The Caine Mutiny Court Martial and Jones knew his vocation. At St. Mark’s, this aspiring actor polished and honed his acting skills by appearing in a number of Shakespearean plays, most memorably playing the lead in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


At Harvard, Jones played as the starting right guard for his football team. The famous game, a 29–29 tie with Yale University, the video of which as Jones admitted was "one of the best films I’ve ever appeared in." Although he became an A.P. All-American and was named to the All-Ivy and All-East teams, [br /]
[br /]
[br /]


he was considered having too lanky a frame and being of too slight a build to be recruited by any professional football teams, so he had to, reluctantly abandon his dream of returning to Texas to play for the Dallas Cowboys.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


Jones now moved to New York to pursue another dream : To become an actor. After just 10 days of having arrived in New York, he acquired his first role in an off-Broadway production. For the next several years, he had no trouble finding work in theater or television. Besides his stage work, Jones had a regular role, appearing as Dr. Mark Toland on the ABC daytime soap opera One Life to Live from 1971 to 1975.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


He made his feature film debut in 1970 as a roommate of Ryan O’Neal’s character in the weepy Love Story based on Erich Segal’s book. Theater happened very slowly and Jones told an interviewer, "I was invited (by Broadway producers) two or three times a year. I was the right actor for a role, but I wasn’t famous enough."[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


Frustrated, Jones shifted to Hollywood. The move provided just the career jumpstart he needed. He landed a prominent role on debut in the popular television series Charlie’s Angels and his first lead role in a Hollywood feature, the 1976 crime drama Jackson County Jail, a movie produced by edgy B–movie icon Roger Carman in which he portrayed an escaped convict on the run from federal marshals. (Jones’ first–ever big screen lead was in the little seen 1970 Canadian film Eliza’s Horoscope.)[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


Over the next two decades, Jones appeared in nearly three dozen films and television projects. After several acclaimed performances, he toiled in relative obscurity, managed to catch the critics’ eyes with movies like The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977), The Executioner’s Song (1982) for which he won an Emmy Award, and the celebrated mini-series Lonesome Dove (1989), co-starring Robert Duvall, Angelica Huston, and Diane Lane.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]




His most notable achievements came with his portrayals of famous (and infamous) Americans. He played an eccentric Hollywood billionaire Howard Hughes in The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977); The brutal unsympathetic Ty Cobb in Cobb; singer Loretta Lynn’s manager–husband Mooney in The Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980); and a homosexual Dallas businessman and suspected Kennedy assassination co-conspirator Clay Shaw in Oliver Stone’s JFK (1991). [br /]
[br /]
[br /]


His eerie, moody interpretation of Shaw earned him an Oscar nomination. The next year, kudos came his way when he played the rock ’n roll terrorist William (Wild Bill) Strannix in the Steven Seagal blockbuster Under Siege, which was his second film for director Andrew Davis. With Andrew Davis, he made the movie that would be the ultimate landmark in his career : The Fugitive, which catapulted him onto the A-list of Hollywood stars.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


The film, based on the hit 1960s television series, starred Harrison Ford as a doctor who is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and escapes from jail determined to find the killer. The film became one of the top grossing hits of all time earning a total of over US $170 million. As a hard-edged but ultimately sympathetic US marshal who pursues the escaped Ford, Jones turned in a brilliant performance, virtually stealing the film from his more famous co-star and winning an Oscar for the Best Supporting Actor. The next year, three more huge box-office hits happened – Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers, The Client, and Blown Away.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


In 1995, he decided to take advantage of his celebrity status to co-script, direct, and star in a movie for cable superstation TNT called The Good Old Boys, which was set and filmed in western Texas.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


Some of his less successful features were Oliver Stone’s Vietnam drama Heaven and Earth, Blue Sky co-starring Jessica Lange, and Cobb, in which he played the baseball legend Ty Cobb.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


He also starred as the cartoonish villain Two-Face, a crusading district attorney turned dualistic bad guy in the critically drubbed but commercially successful Batman Forever. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]


His next box-office triumph was the 1997 science-fiction/action-comedy Men in Black, where he played Agent K along with his sidekick played by Will Smith, a pair of immigration officials protecting the earth from ‘the scum of the universe.’[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


His next several projects were relative disappointments both critically and commercially : Volcano (1997) in which he played a disaster emergency official trying to protect New York city from a raging volcano; Small Soldiers (1998) in which he gave his voice to Major Chip Hazard, the leader of a renegade band of toy soldiers; US Marshals, (1998) a sequel to The Fugitive in which he returned to his role of the determined US marshal Samuel Gerard, and he scored another huge hit with the 1999 action thriller Double Jeopardy, co-starring Ashley Judd.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


Jones again had success at the box-office in 2000 with Rules of Engagement, where he played a lawyer defending a marine colonel, played by Samuel L. Jackson. Later that year, he starred with Hollywood veterans Clint Eastwood, James Garner, and Donald Sutherland in the well-received Space Cowboys, about a team of four ex-astronauts called upon to fly one more big mission.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


Tommy Lee Jones is a championship polo player and a dedicated horseman. He owns a 3,000-acre ranch in his birthplace of San Saba, Texas, 150 miles from San Antonio. He was married to Katherine Lardner, an actress and writer in 1981 and had two children, Austin and Victoria, before their divorce in 1996. In March 2001, Jones married his longtime girlfriend, photographer Dawn Laurel. The couple met on the sets of the 1995 TV movie The Good Old Boys, which Jones directed.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

[b]Tommy Lee Jones[/b] the only son of an oil-field worker and a police officer mother, is known for the dangerous, intelligent, yet sympathetic touch he gave to the characters he played. Be it the role of a loyal and faithful friend Woodrow Call in Lonesome Dove, or the insane and murderous Harvey Dent in Batman Forever, he brought that rare touch of graphic realism to his roles. Exuding a unique aura, Jones can seldom be ignored in a movie even if he were not playing the lead as in The Fugitive, where critics acknowledged that Jones stole the show from Harrison Ford.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


He has received critical acclaim for his eerie portrayal of the alleged Kennedy assassination co-conspirator and homosexual businessman Clay ‘Bertrand’ Shaw in Oliver Stone’s JFK.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


Devoid of stereotype roles, Jones has given significantly diverse performances with the unique exception of the sequel to The Fugitive, the US Marshals.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

One of the most talented artists in Hollywood, Tommy Lee Jones is still tied up with a long list of projects as an actor, producer, writer and director.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1946 Tommy Lee Jones was born to Clyde Jones and Lucille Marie Jones in San Saba, Texas.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1969 At Harvard, with Al Gore as roommate for he becomes an All-Ivy offensive guard on the football team. Took part in theatrical school productions, playing the lead in Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. After being rejected for the National Football League, he left for New York to pursue a career as an actor. The same year, he landed his first role in the Broadway drama A Patriot for Me.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1970 Jones made his first feature film debut as the roommate of Ryan O’ Neal’s character in Love Story. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1971 Landed a regular role as Dr. Mark Toland on the ABC daytime soap opera One Life to Live for the next four years.
Marries Kate Lardner.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1973 Worked in another low profile feature, Life Study.[br /]

1975 Moved to Los Angeles. Made a guest appearance in the pilot episode of Charlie’s Angels.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


• 1976 Got his first lead role in a Hollywood feature, Jackson County Jail, and also a TV movie, Smash-Up On Interstate 5.
1977 Played the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes in the biographical The Amazing Howard Hughes. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1978 Played the lead role in The Betsy, based on the novel by Harold Robbins. Divorced Kate Lardner.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1980 While working on the movie Back Roads, he met Kimberley Cloughley, his second wife-to-be. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1981 Release of Back Roads.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1982 Played a convict in the movie, The Executioner’s Song, which won him an Emmy Award.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

1983 Played the role of a pirate in Nate and Hayes.
• 1984 Worked in River Rat.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1985 Worked in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1986 Black Moon Rising, and a TV movie Yuri Nosenko, KGB. Also, played a frustrated Vietnam veteran in the movie, The Park is Mine.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1987 The Big Town and the TV movie Broken Vows.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1988 starred as an industrial tycoon in Stormy Monday. Also acted in the TV features : Gotham, April Morning, and Stranger on my Land.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1989 The year of the celebrated TV mini-series Lonesome Dove, and the movie, The Package by director Andrew Davis.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


• 1990 The movie Fire Birds in which he played an Air Force veteran. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1991 Blue Sky, a movie premiered three years later. Also Oliver Stone’s JFK in which he played the chilling Clay ‘Bertrand’ Shaw.
[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1992 Played the rock ‘n’ rolling Wild Bill Strannix, a terrorist leader in Under Siege, with Steven Seagal, and also did the role of a child psychiatrist in House of Cards. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1993 The Fugitive, with Harrison Ford, which put him in the A-list of the Hollywood stars. Also played a G.I. in Heaven and Earth.
1994 The role of a prison warden in Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Also worked in The Client, Blown Away, and the biography Cobb.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1995 The Good Old Boys, written and directed by Jones himself.[br /]

The year’s eagerly awaited Batman Forever in which he played the cartoon villain Harvey Dent / Two Face.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1997 Teamed up with Will Smith as Agent K in the blockbuster: Men in Black. Also played Mike Roark, an emergency expert official in Volcano.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 1998 Returned as US Marshal Sam Gerard, the unrelenting police officer, in US Marshals. Also gave his voice to the leader of a renegade band of toy soldiers as Major Chip Hazard, in Small Soldiers. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]


• 1999 Double Jeopardy with Ashley Judd.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• 2000 Played a hard–hitting attorney trying to save the life of a marine colonel in Rules of Engagement, with Samuel L. Jackson.
With fellow veterans Clint Eastwood, James Garner, and Donald Sutherland in the sci-fi Space Cowboys.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

[b]Movies[/b][br /]
[br /]
[br /]

[b]1970[/b][br /]

Love Story – Small part as Ryan O’Neal’s roommate at Harvard University.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1976[/b][br /]

Jackson County Jail – Coley Blake, convict.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1977[/b][br /]

Rolling Thunder – Johnny Vohden, Vietnam veteran.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1978[/b][br /]

Eyes of Laura Mars – John Neville, police detective.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1980[/b][br /]

Coal Miner’s Daughter – Mooney Lynn, Loretta Lynn’s husband.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1981[/b][br /]

Back Roads – Elmore Pratt, ex-boxer.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1983[/b][br /]

Nate And Hayes – Captain Bully Hayes, ‘good’ pirate.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1984[/b][br /]

The River Rat – Billy McCain, ex-convict.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1986[/b][br /]

Black Moon Rising – Sam Quint, professional burglar.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1987[/b][br /]

The Big Town – George Cole, professional gambler.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1988[/b][br /]

Stormy Monday – James Cosmo, industrial tycoon.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1989[/b][br /]

The Package – Thomas Boyette, spy and political assassin.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1990[/b][br /]

Fire Birds – Brad Little, Air Force veteran.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b] 1991[/b][br /]

Blue Sky – Hank Marshall, Army Major (premiered in 1994).
JFK – Clay Bertrand Shaw, suspected co-conspirator in Kennedy assassination.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1992[/b][br /]

Under Siege – Wild Bill Strannix, terrorist leader.[br /]

House of Cards – Dr. Jake T. Beerlander, child psychiatrist.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1993[/b][br /]

Heaven and Earth – Steve Butler, G.I. during Vietnam war.[br /]

The Fugitive – US marshal Sam Gerard.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]



[b]1994[/b][br /]

The Client – Roy Foltrigg, district attorney.
Natural Born Killers – Prison warden.[br /]

Blown Away – Ryan Gaerity, ex-IRA bomb expert.
Cobb – Ty Cobb, baseball legend.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1995[/b][br /]

Batman Forever – Harvey Dent / Two-Face.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1997[/b][br /]

Volcano – Mike Roark, Director of the office of Emergency Management for the City of Los Angeles.[br /]

Men In Black – Agent K.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1998[/b][br /]
US Marshals – US Marshal Sam Gerard.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1999[/b][br /]

Double Jeopardy – Travis Lehman, Parole officer.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]TV Telefilms [/b] [br /][br /]
[br /]


[b]1977[/b][br /]

The Amazing Howard Hughes – Howard Hughes, eccentric billionaire.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1980[/b][br /]

Barn Burning – Abner Snopes.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1982[/b][br /]

The Executioner’s Song – Gary Gilmore, convicted murderer.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1984[/b][br /]

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof – Brick.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1985[/b][br /]

The Park is Mine – Vietnam war veteran.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1986[/b][br /]

Yuri Nosenko, KGB – CIA agent.[br /]

Broken Vows – Joseph McMahon, Catholic priest.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1987[/b][br /]

Stranger on my Land – Buddy Whitman, rancher.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1988[/b][br /]

Gotham – Eddie Millard, private eye.
April Morning – Moses Cooper, settler during the American Revolutionary War.[br /]

Lonesome Dove – Captain Woodrow Call, ex-Texas ranger.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1995[/b][br /]

The Good Old Boys – Hewey Calloway, cowboy.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]TV Series[/b][br /]


[b]1971 – 1975[/b][br /]

One Life To Live – Soap series regular as Dr. Mark Toland.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1975[/b][br /]

Barnaby Jones – Episode : Fatal Witness – Guest appearance as a doctor accused of murder.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1976[/b][br /]

Baretta – Episode : Dead Man Out – Guest appearance.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1976[/b][br /]

Charlie’s Angels : Pilot Episode – Guest appearance.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• [b]Tommy Lee Jones,[/b] when in a cowboy movie, easily blends with the rugged surroundings in which a Western movie is made, but the comparison does not end there. Jones, with his archetypal Texan drawl, also exudes the typical sharp and ‘poker-faced’ humor, which is an attribute of the epitome of a true man of the West.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• Darn right, it’s fun. There’s good company. It’s creative. It’s adventurous. Combines high adventure and art with intellect. It’s more fun than polo. It’s like going undefeated at football.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]-Tommy Lee Jones, when asked if making movies is fun. [/b] [br /]
[br /]
[br /]


• Somebody’s gonna give you some money to perform a job, you do your best to make ’em a good hand… [br /][br /]
[br /]


• My thanks to the Academy for the very finest, greatest award that any actor can ever receive. The only thing a man can say at a time like this is … I am not really bald.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• It’s no mean calling to bring fun into the afternoon of large numbers of people. That too is part of my job, and I’m happy to serve when called on.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

• That’s what I am. I just finished a film. I wanted to change my looks and I wanted to actually look like me and this is the way I look."[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]-Tommy Lee Jones, when asked if his moustache was for a movie.[/b][br /]
[br /]
[br /]


• The most important thing is desire… you have to really want to. It has to be the most important thing to you."[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]-Tommy Lee Jones, when asked to give advice to new actors. [/b] [br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1981[/b][br /]

Golden Globe Award nomination for the Best Motion Picture Actor for Musical / Comedy for Coal Miner’s Daughter. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1983[/b][br /]

Emmy Award winner for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Limited Series or a Special for The Executioner’s Song.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1989[/b][br /]

Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actor in a mini-series or a special for Lonesome Dove.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1990[/b][br /]

Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance as Supporting Actor in a series, mini-series, or motion picture made for TV : Lonesome Dove.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1992[/b][br /]

Oscar Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in JFK.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1993[/b][br /]

LAFCA Award for Best Supporting Actor in The Fugitive.[br /]

BAFTA Film Award nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in JFK.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1994[/b][br /]

MTV Movie Award nomination for Best On-Screen Duo for The Fugitive.[br /]

Golden Globe Award for Best performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture for The Fugitive.[br /]

CFCA Award winner for Best Supporting Actor for The Fugitive.[br /]

BAFTA Film Award nomination for Best Supporting actor for The Fugitive.
Oscar Award for Best Supporting Actor for The Fugitive.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]



[b]1996 [/b] [br /]

SAG Award nomination for outstanding performance by a male actor in a TV movie / miniseries for The Good Old Boys.
MTV Movie Award nomination for Best Villain for Batman Forever. [br /]
[br /]
[br /]


[b]1998[/b][br /]

Golden Satellite Award nomination for ‘Best Actor in a Motion Picture’ for Comedy / Musical for Men in Black.[br /]

Blockbuster Entertainment Award nomination for ‘Favorite Actor’ for the sci-fi blockbuster Men in Black.[br /]


[b]1999[/b][br /]

Blockbuster Entertainment Award nomination for Favorite Duo in action / adventure for the sequel to The Fugitive, US Marshals.[br /]
[br /]
[br /]

Comments - Tommy Lee Jones