Tommy Lee Jones Biography

Tommy Lee Jones won an Oscar for his supporting role in The Fugitive (1993), and got just as much attention as the movie’s star, Harrison Ford.

Jones played Samuel Gerard, the relentless U.S. marshal who was hot on the heels of Ford’s on-the-lam doctor. After that success came leading roles in Oliver Stone‘s Heaven and Earth (1993), Cobb (1994, with Jones as notorious ballplayer Ty Cobb), The Client (1994, with Susan Sarandon) and Men in Black (1997, with Will Smith).

Tommy Lee Jones grew up in Texas, studied English at Harvard (where he roomed with Al Gore) and started his career on the stage. He got into the movies, debuting in 1970’s Love Story.

He worked steadily in the movies in character roles, and in 1982 won an Emmy for the TV movie of Norman Mailer‘s The Executioner’s Song. In the 1980s his roles got bigger and better, and his supporting role in JFK (1991) earned him an Oscar nomination.

His turn as the worried dad of an American soldier in In the Valley of Elah (2007) brought him another Oscar nomination (his first for a leading role). Tommy Lee Jones’s other movies include Coal Miner’s Daughter (1980, starring Sissy Spacek), Space Cowboys (2000, with Clint Eastwood), The Missing (2003, with Cate Blanchett) and the Coen Brothers‘ 2007 film version of Cormac McCarthy‘s No Country for Old Men.

He also starred in the sequels Men In Black 2 (2002, again with Smith) and Men in Black 3 (2012, with Smith and Josh Brolin).