Tommy Lee Jones Biography
Summary
"Tommy Lee Jones" (born September 15, 1946) is an Academy Award-winning American actor and director.
Biography
Early life
Jones was born in San Saba, Texas, the son of Clyde C. Jones, an oil field worker, and Lucille Marie (née Scott), a police officer, school teacher, and beauty shop owner; the two were married and divorced twice. Jones, an eighth-generation Texan, has a Cherokee Native American grandparent. He was a resident of Midland, Texas and attended the same high school, Robert E. Lee, as the First Lady Laura Bush.
Jones graduated from 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 Bob Somerby, editor of the media criticism site, the Daily Howler. This weblog, considered to possibly be the first political blog, is well known for its documentation of the unfair treatment by the press corps of Al Gore during the 2000 Presidential election. 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 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.). 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 1977 he co-starred in "Rolling Thunder (1977 film)" and 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. 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.
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. 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 "No Country for Old Men". Jones is rumored to be a lock for a 2007 Oscar nomination for one of the performances.
Jones has also become a spokesperson for popular Japanese brewing company Suntory.
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 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.
External links
(No Country for Old Men) Official Canadian site
Credit
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article about Tommy Lee Jones.
