Celebrity Biographies
Thomas Jane
They had twenty meters of shark in the “Deep Blue Sea” to hit the target, and they had to hit him right, but this tough guy from Baltimore can’t even get a harpoon for his feet. When he was still an unknown in Hollywood, he survived as a busker. He says that people threw coins at him to get him to stop playing, but they probably did it because of his intimidating look.
Nothing in life has ever come free for Thomas Jane. When he arrived in Hollywood with his suitcase and his acting dreams, no one took him by the hand to get him fully into the industry. He had to work as a secondary in many small productions in order to gain a foothold in the world of cinema. This is how Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The Raven: City of Angels arrived . He was clear that these were necessary steps for his career: “You have to start somewhere, in an indie movie or wherever. Everything is a beginning. You can’t come out of nowhere and make an 80 million movie. It is very unlikely”.
Ten years after his debut, after many works that will not be remembered, he had the opportunity to work with one of the young promises of the moment: Paul Thomas Anderson. Although his role in Boogie Nights was very minor, his performance drew a lot of attention. The Screen Actors Guild nominated him for best supporting actor and this award served as a springboard for his career. The following year he participated in The Thin Red Line , that film that spoke of the war in a different way. He later collaborated with Anderson again on Magnolia , the drama that established this director as one of Hollywood’s great hopes.
Thomas Jane had shown that he was a good supporting actor and that drama was not too big for him. However, success would come with action movies. His performances in Deep Blue Sea , a great shark movie as seedy as it is entertaining, and in Under Suspicion they discovered an actor who performed perfectly in the role of a tough and strong guy, with a thick emotional shell. This is how works like Stander , The Punisher or Deadly Shot came to him .
Cornered in this genre, he had to go to television to get a different role. The opportunity came with Hung , an HBO series. In it he played Ray Drecker, a basketball coach who is going through a bad time and who decides to prostitute himself to earn extra money. This lighthearted and ridiculous character suited him like a glove and formed a perfect tandem with Jane Adams . Both were nominated for Golden Globes: he for best comedy actor and she for supporting actress.
Thomas Jane has worked as a director on three occasions. The first was in the year 2000 with the animated film Jonni Nitro , a work that went unnoticed due to its little publicity. In 2009 he gave us his second work: Dark Country . This is a thriller horror film in which a couple picks up a hit-and-run survivor, played by Jane himself, who forces them to commit a series of crimes. Despite the fact that it was not a very successful production, the film received good reviews and has served as a letter of introduction to obtain financing for his latest film: the western, not released in Spain, A Magnificent Death from a Shattered Hand .
This actor has found his place in action cinema, a genre that he knows perfectly well and that has marked his way of directing films. However, he has also shown that he is capable of performing well in both comedy and drama. He is not one of the great stars of Hollywood, but thanks to his efforts he has managed to become a well-known face for the general public.