Tommy Lee Jones: From Harvard Yard to Hollywood Star

Tommy Lee Jones, born on September 15, 1946, is a celebrated American actor renowned for his strong, serious characters and has garnered numerous accolades throughout his career, including an Academy Award, a Golden Globe Award, a Primetime Emmy Award, and two Screen Actors Guild Awards. He established himself as a leading man in the 1990s after appearing in several projects from the 1960s to 1980s.

Early Life and Education

An eighth-generation Texan, Tommy Lee Jones was born in San Saba, Texas, to Lucille Marie Jones (née Scott), a police officer, school teacher, and beauty shop owner, and Clyde C. Jones, a cowboy and oil field worker. His parents were married and divorced twice. Jones is of Cherokee descent.

During his adolescence, Jones faced challenges, including physical abuse. When Tommy Lee was a teenager, Clyde Jones took a job in the oil fields of North Africa. To remain in the United States, he secured a scholarship to St. Mark's School of Texas, an elite Dallas prep school, graduating in 1965.

Harvard University

Jones's pursuit of higher education led him to Harvard College in 1965, supported by financial aid. He resided in Dunster House, where he roomed with Al Gore, who would later become the Vice President of the United States, and Bob Somerby, who later became editor of the media criticism site The Daily Howler. At Harvard, Jones majored in English literature and studied under dramatist Robert Chapman, graduating cum laude in 1969 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Jones also excelled as an athlete, playing guard on the Harvard Crimson football team from 1965 to 1968. He was a member of Harvard's undefeated 1968 football team, was named as a first-team All-Ivy League selection, and played in the famous 1968 Game. The game featured a memorable and last-minute Harvard 16-point comeback to tie Yale. He also loved drama and performed in a number of school productions, most notably playing the lead in Shakespeare's Coriolanus.

Early Career

Upon graduating from Harvard in 1969, Jones moved to New York City to pursue an acting career. He made his Broadway debut in 1969 in "A Patriot for Me." In 1970, he got his first movie role, playing a Harvard student in Love Story. From 1971 to 1975, he played Dr. Mark Toland on the TV show One Life to Live. In addition to his stage work, Jones had a regular role as Dr. Mark Toland on the daytime soap opera One Life to Live from 1971 to 1975. He also starred in the TV movie The Amazing Howard Hughes, playing the main character. In films, he played a hunted escaped prisoner in Jackson County Jail (1976).

Frustrated with the dwindling opportunities on Broadway, Jones moved to Hollywood in 1975. He soon landed a prominent role in the debut of the popular television series Charlie's Angels as well as his first lead role in a Hollywood feature, the 1976 crime drama Jackson County Jail, produced by edgy B-movie icon Roger Corman. (Jones' first-ever big screen lead was in the little-seen 1970 Canadian film Eliza's Horoscope.)

Recognition and Breakthrough Roles

In 1980, Jones received his first Golden Globe nomination for playing Doolittle "Mooney" Lynn in Coal Miner's Daughter. He played the husband of country singer Loretta Lynn. In 1983, he won an Emmy for Best Actor for his role as Gary Gilmore in the TV movie The Executioner's Song. The same year, he played pirate captain Bully Hayes in Nate and Hayes. In 1989, he received another Emmy nomination for his portrayal of Texas Ranger Woodrow F.

Over the next two decades, Jones appeared in nearly three dozen film and television projects and turned in a number of critically acclaimed performances. Highlights of his pre-Fugitive career include well-received TV movies like The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977), The Executioner's Song (1982) - for which he won an Emmy Award - and the celebrated CBS miniseries Lonesome Dove (1989), co-starring Robert Duvall, Anjelica Huston and Diane Lane. He also earned kudos for his supporting performances in Coal Miner's Daughter (1980), co-starring Sissy Spacek, and Oliver Stone's JFK (1991), starring Kevin Costner.

Rise to Prominence

If Jones's manic performance as a villainous ex-CIA operative in the 1992 thriller Under Siege - starring Steven Seagal and directed by Andrew Davis - introduced his talents to a far wider audience than he had previously known, Davis' action-thriller The Fugitive (1993) catapulted Jones onto the A-list of Hollywood stars. The film, based on the hit 1960s television series, starred Harrison Ford as a doctor who is wrongly convicted of murdering his wife and escapes from jail determined to find her true killer. In addition to garnering critical acclaim, the film became one of the top-grossing hits of all time, earning a total of over $170 million.

Read also: US Education System Performance

Marshal Samuel Gerard in The Fugitive was highly praised. He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for it. For the latter film, Jones earned an Academy Award nomination (best supporting actor) for his portrayal of Clay Shaw, a homosexual businessman and suspected conspirator in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963. Within the next year, Jones starred in three more huge box-office hits - Stone's Natural Born Killers, The Client and Blown Away - as well as several less successful features, including Stone's Vietnam drama Heaven and Earth, Blue Sky, co-starring Jessica Lange; and Cobb, in which he played the brutal, unsympathetic baseball legend Ty Cobb. In 1995, he starred as the cartoonish villain Two-Face alongside Val Kilmer in the critically drubbed but commercially successful Batman Forever. Jones's next box-office triumph was the 1997 science fiction action-comedy Men in Black, a summer blockbuster co-starring Will Smith.

Continued Success

After a few films that were relative disappointments both critically and commercially, Jones scored another huge hit with the 1999 action-thriller Double Jeopardy, co-starring Ashley Judd. In 2000, Jones again had success at the box office as a lawyer fighting to defend a marine colonel, played by Samuel L. Jackson, in the courtroom drama Rules of Engagement. Later that year, he starred alongside fellow Hollywood veterans Clint Eastwood, James Garner and Donald Sutherland in the well-received Space Cowboys, about a team of four ex-astronauts called upon to fly one more big mission.

Jones roared back into prominence in 2007, playing Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in No Country For Old Men, which won the Academy Award for best picture. He also was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as Hank Deerfield in the film In the Valley of Elah.

Recent Years

In recent years, Jones has continued to work steadily. In 2010, he appeared in the drama The Company Men with Ben Affleck and Chris Cooper. The following year, he had a supporting role in the big budget action film Captain America: The First Avenger. Jones had an especially busy 2012, with the release of four very different films. He returned to his most popular film franchise, reteaming with Will Smith for Men in Black 3, then shared the screen with Meryl Streep in Hope Springs, playing half of a long-married couple seeking to save their marriage. He also played two famous historic figures: In Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, Jones portrayed influential Republican politician Thaddeus Stevens, starring opposite Daniel Day-Lewis as Abraham Lincoln. His acting in Lincoln was highly praised. He received his fourth Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Since Lincoln, Jones has continued to appear in popular movies.

Directing Career

In 2005, Jones directed his first movie for theaters, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. This film was shown at the 2005 Cannes Film Festival. Jones won the Best Actor Award at Cannes for his performance. Jones's character speaks both English and Spanish in the film. He also directed, produced, and starred with Samuel L. Jones cowrote, directed, and starred in The Homesman (2014), a western about a pioneer woman (played by Hilary Swank) and a claim jumper (Jones) who must shepherd three mentally unstable women from the Nebraska Territory to Iowa in the late 19th century.

Read also: Waterville's Colby College

Other Ventures

Since 2006, Jones has been a spokesperson for a Japanese coffee brand called Boss. He appears in many Japanese TV commercials as "Alien Jones." This character is an alien who looks like a human to observe people. In 2011, he appeared in public service announcements in Japan. In addition to acting and directing, Jones owned and helped to operate several cattle and horse ranches.

Personal Life

Tommy Lee Jones was married to Kate Lardner from 1971 to 1978. He met his second wife, Kimberlea Cloughley, on the Texas set of Back Roads (1981). They married in 1981 and had two children, Austin and Victoria, before divorcing in 1996. In March 2001, Jones married his longtime girlfriend, photographer Dawn Laurel.

Jones resides in Terrell Hills, Texas, a city just outside of downtown San Antonio, and speaks Spanish. He owns a 3,000-acre (1,200 ha) cattle ranch in San Saba County, Texas, and a ranch near Van Horn, Texas, which served as the set for his film The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. He is a polo player, and he has a house in a polo country club in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He supports the Polo Training Foundation. He is also a big fan of the San Antonio Spurs basketball team.

tags: #tommy #lee #jones #college #education