Tommy Lee Jones
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Tommy Lee Jones at the Cannes Film Festival |
Tommy Lee Jones (born
September 15,
1946) is an
Oscar-winning
American actor and
director.
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 graduated the
St. Mark's School of Texas and attended
Harvard on a scholarship, where he was a roommate of former
Vice President Al Gore and of
John Lithgow at
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
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 1990s, movies such as
The Fugitive costarring
Harrison Ford 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.
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.
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). On
March 19,
2001, he married his third wife,
Dawn Laurel.
*
American Dog (2008)
*
No Country for Old Men (2007)
*
A Prairie Home Companion (2006)
*
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2006) (director)
*
Man of the House (2005)
*
The Missing (2003)
*
The Hunted (2003)
*
Men in Black II (2002)
*
Space Cowboys (2000)
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Rules of Engagement (2000)
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Double Jeopardy (1999)
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Small Soldiers (1998) (voice)
*
U.S. Marshals (1998)
*
Men in Black (1997)
*
Volcano (1997)
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Batman Forever (1995)
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The Good Old Boys (1995) (TV) (director)
*
Cobb (1994)
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Blue Sky (1994)
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Natural Born Killers (1994)
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The Client (1994)
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Blown Away (1994)
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The Fugitive (1993)
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of Cards (1993)
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Heaven & Earth (1993)
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Under Siege (1992)
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JFK (1991)
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Fire Birds (1990)
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The Package (1989)
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Lonesome Dove (1989)
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Gotham (1988) (TV)
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Stormy Monday (1988)
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April Morning (1988) (TV)
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Stranger on My Land (1988) (TV)
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The Big Town (1987)
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Broken Vows (1987) (TV)
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Yuri Nosenko, KGB (1986) (TV)
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Black Moon Rising (1986)
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The Park Is Mine (1986) (TV)
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Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1985) (TV)
*
The River Rat (1984)
*
Nate and Hayes (1983) (aka Savage Islands)
*
The Rainmaker (1982) (TV)
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The Executioner's Song (1982) (TV)
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Back Roads (1981)
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Barn Burning (1980) (TV)
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Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)
*
Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)
*
The Betsy (1978)
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Rolling Thunder (1977)
*
The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977) (TV)
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Jackson County Jail (1976)
*
Smash-Up on Interstate 5 (1976) (TV)
*
Charlie's Angels (1976) (TV)
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Eliza's Horoscope (1975)
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Life Study (1973)
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Love Story (1970)
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One Life to Live (1968)
Footnotes
External links
