| Tommy Lee Jones Biography | ||||||||||||||||||
 "I do not have a sense of humor of any recognizable sort." Early Life: Tommy Lee Jones was born September 15, 1946, in San Saba, Texas. Jones was raised an only child by his father, Clyde C., a ranch hand-turned-oil rigger, and mother, Lucille Marie (Scott) Jones, a beauty parlor owner. His father’s job led the family from one West Texas oil town to another before finally settling in Midland, Texas. Despite a rough-and-tumble image, even as a child, Jones excelled both in both academics and athletics. He received an athletic scholarship to attend St. Mark’s School of Texas, an elite all-boys prep school in Dallas, where he played both football and soccer. Jones attended Harvard on a need-based scholarship, staying in Mower B-12 as a freshman, across the hall from future Vice President Al Gore. Also as an upperclassman, he was roommates with Gore. 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 moved to New York City to become an actor, making his Broadway debut in the 1969 play A Patriot for Me where he portrayed a number of supporting roles. In 1970 he landed his first film role, playing a Harvard student in Love Story. Between 1971 and 1975, he portrayed Dr. Mark Toland on the ABC soap opera, One Life to Live. He returned to the stage again in the 1974 Broadway production of Ulysses in Nighttown with Zero Mostel. He then played the role of an escaped convict who was hunted down by the police in Jackson County Jail (1976). In 1980, Jones earned his first Golden Globe Award nomination for his portrayal of Doolittle 'Mooney' Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. 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. In 1989 he earned another Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Woodrow F. Call in the mini-series Lonesome Dove. 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. 1991 brought him his first Academy Award nomination for JFK. 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 the first theatrical feature film he directed, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, which was presented at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. In it, Jones regularly speaks Spanish. 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 the critically acclaimed No Country for Old Men. He was nominated for an Academy Award for No Country for Old Men. Personal Life: Jones was married to Kate Lardner from 1971 to 1978. He later married Kimberlea Cloughley and had two children, Austin Leonard (born 1982) and Victoria Kafka (born 1991). On March 19, 2001, he married his third wife, Dawn Laurel. Jones raises polo ponies and brangus cattle in-between acting assignments and guards his privacy zealously. He has a home in San Antonio and a home in Florida where he plays polo most of the time. | ||||||||||||||||||
| Career Highlights | ||||||||||||||||||
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