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Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an Academy
Award-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 was also a resident of Midland, Texas, and
attended the same high school, Midland Lee, as the First Lady Laura Bush.
Graduation
Jones graduated 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 John Lithgow 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 1967 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 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.
For many of his movies he utilized Duc Truong, a lookalike stunt double.
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). 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.
Source : Some of the information on
this page came from a Wikipedia article and is licensed under the GNU
Documentation License. ©2008 www.geneticmatrix.com.
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Tommy Lee
Jones - Manifestor - Biography
