Tommy lee jones

Born on September 15, 1946, in San Saba (Texas), Tommy Lee Jones is the son of a police officer and an oil prospector who were divorced twice. Despite the family breakdown, he had a happy childhood, marked by his fondness for sports and a privileged mind for studies. Very soon he discovered his acting vocation, by participating in a school performance of “Goldilocks and the Three Bears”. “He was wearing a paper hood that looked like a bear. It had eye holes, but when I turned my head I couldn’t see anything, I got really nervous and said my line, ‘thank you so much Goldilocks, that’s beautiful.’ event was full of parents, students and teachers who laughed at my expense.So my entire acting career stems from there,

He studied Art at Harvard, where he was able to enroll thanks to a scholarship. There he rubbed shoulders with boys from a class much higher than his own, like future Vice President Al Gore, his roommate. Together they formed a country band with the sole objective of attracting the attention of the female gender. Young Jones wasted no time, as he triumphed as a star on the American football team, and he did not neglect his exams, far from it, as he finally graduated cum laude.

Determined to try his luck as an actor, he moved to New York, where in 1969 he appeared on stage for the first time with the Broadway version of “A Patriot For Me”, written shortly before by the British playwright John Osborne . He made his film debut playing practically himself, since he was a Harvard student, in Love Story , based on the novel by another fellow student from campus, Erich Segal , who stated that he had relied on cronies Jones and Al Gore to compose Oliver, the protagonist.

In the late 1970s and throughout the following decade, Tommy Lee Jones appeared in various television titles, including the Charlie’s Angels pilot , and the TV movie The Mighty Howard Hughes , where he played the charismatic magnate, filmmaker, and aviator. At that time he lavished himself on the theater, and made numerous movies, as he was an inmate who tried to escape in The Rape Cell , a war veteran in The Korean Express , a bearded sea captain in The Pirates of the Islands savages , automobile businessman in The Hardeman saga , mobster in Stormy Monday , and above all the husband of a country star (Sissy Spacek ) in the tremendously successful (especially in the United States) I want to be free . For this last work, he earned his first Golden Globe nomination for leading actor. In Two to California – about an ex-boxer who becomes a prostitute’s traveling companion – Jones shares the screen with Sally Field.

Divorced from Kate Lardner, daughter of screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. ( The King of the Game ), Tommy Lee Jones joined Kimberlea Cloughley, mother of his two children. He finally replaced her with Dawn Laurel, his current partner.

After The Hunt for the Red Wolf , Tommy Lee Jones earned his first Oscar nomination, for Best Supporting Role, for JFK . In Oliver Stone’s film he played Clay Shaw, a CIA-linked businessman accused by prosecutor Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner) of conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy.

The following year he was the villain of High Alert , a spin-off of action in the service of Steven Seagal. The director, Andrew Davis, was so satisfied with his work that he did not hesitate to recruit him again for his next feature film, The Fugitive , the film that has done the most in Tommy Lee Jones’ career. In the film adaptation of the popular 1960s television series, he played Texas Ranger Samuel Gerard, in charge of capturing Dr. Richard Kimble ( Harrison Ford ) accused (unfairly) of murdering his wife. For his work, he won the Oscar for best supporting actor. He went out to collect the award with a shaved head, due to the demands of the film he was shooting at the time, Ty Cobb, around a legendary baseball player. “The recognition was very good because I had fun that night and because on a business level it improved my business. It’s also great for your ego, because every actor seeks recognition, and with the Oscar you have the feeling that the industry approves you.”

Jones returned to the orders of Oliver Stone , in Heaven and Earth , where he became a sergeant in love with a native woman during the Vietnam War, and in Natural Born Killers , where his character tried to help the detective (Tom Sizemore). obsessed with getting rid of the psychopathic leads ( Woody Harrelson , Juliette Lewis ). Throughout the 90s, the actor took advantage of the fact that he was at his peak, putting himself in the shoes of Harvey Dent, turned into the monstrous Two-Face in Batman Forever , and also starring in blockbusters such as The Client , Flying Through the Air , volcano andMen in Black , which would know two sequels. He even reprized as Samuel Gerard in US Marshals , a belated sequel, and took Clint Eastwood ‘s command as one of the grown-up astronauts in Space Cowboys .

A big fan of polo, Tommy Lee Jones speaks Spanish. “I have traveled through Mexico, Argentina and Spain.” He lives away from the madding crowd on a sprawling ranch near Mexico, in his hometown. “The nearest cinema is many miles away. They don’t know me there from the movies, they’ve never asked me for an autograph,” he said. On his property, he filmed sequences for his debut as a film director, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada , about a guy obsessed with moving the corpse of his best friend to the place he had told him about several times. He won two awards at the Cannes Film Festival, for best actor (Jones himself) and for the script, the work of the Mexican Guillermo Arriaga ( Amores perros ). He returned to direct in 2011, the television productionThe Sunset Limited , adaptation of the play by Cormac McCarthy , in which he starred with Samuel L. Jackson .

He was again nominated for an Oscar for his role as a father searching for his son, a missing soldier in In the Valley of Elah . And although he took the Daniel Day-Lewis award from him ( Wells of Ambition ), that year he triumphed at the Coen brothers’ No Country For Old Men ceremony, where Jones looked arguably much more like a law enforcement officer looking for another fugitive. , in this case a dangerous assassin.

In The Company Men he was a laid-off worker along with some colleagues. In 2012 the interpreter received the Donostia prize in recognition of his career, and was more active than ever, with his role as General Douglas MacArthur in Emperor , Men in Black 3 and the romantic If you really want… In addition, he filmed Lincoln , by Steven Spielberg , where he gave his chest as Republican leader Thaddeus Stevens, a radical abolitionist capable of putting a Democratic rival in his place. The Academy recognized his work with a fourth Oscar nomination.

Tommy Lee Jones is set to direct and star in The Homesman , with Meryl Streep and Hilary Swank , about pioneers in Arkansas in the mid-19th century. “I’ve had some of my happiest days when I’m a director,” explains the star.