September 7, 2006. Copyright 2006, Graphic News. All rights reserved

Craggy-faced Hollywood star Tommy Lee Jones turns 60
By Joanna Griffin

LONDON, September 7, Graphic News:  To some filmgoers, Tommy Lee Jones is a cult movie star whose trademark deadpan delivery and understated style transform every movie he appears in. Others merely know they have seen his grizzled features somewhere, but his name escapes them. The famously taciturn Jones, who is 60 on September 15, might even prefer it that way.

Though Jones has been toiling away on television and on the big screen for more than 30 years, he is one of those rare actors with the power to win over new fans late in his career. While teenage boys loved his portrayal of Agent K in the comedy sci-fi Men in Black films, his 2005 portrayal of a cowboy dragging his dead friend through the desert home to be buried in Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada won him best actor in Cannes.

Born to a hard-drinking cattle rancher and his beautician wife on September 15, 1946, in San Saba, Texas, Jones worked on the oil fields before winning a football scholarship to Harvard. There, he roomed with Al Gore, who would later become the U.S. vice president, and the pair apparently provided the inspiration for the character Oliver in the movie Love Story (1970). Jones graduated with a degree in English Literature.

Jones moved to New York to pursue his love of acting, and soon won theatre roles. As
Dr Mark Toland in the ABC TV soap opera One Life to Live (1971-75), he revealed, if not yet his talent for playing outsiders, a dark quality that he has accessed in his best work since. In 1976 he played an escaped convict in Jackson County Jail, and in 1981 he was a drifting boxer who teams up with prostitute Sally Field in Back Roads.

But it was JonesÕs role as Gary Gilmore in The ExecutionerÕs Song (1983) that won him his first real critical acclaim. Jones won an Emmy for his portrayal of the real-life murderer who demanded that his death penalty be carried out. By now, he had developed a reputation for playing troubled but charismatic characters. In The Rainmaker (1982) he played a travelling witchdoctor who promised to bring relief to a drought-ridden farm.

Jones seems to be one of those actors whom fans and critics love even if Hollywood itself has not always understood why. After winning an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in The Fugitive (1993), Jones was squarely in the big league. But it was his role as Agent K with Will Smith in Barry SonnenfieldÕs two Men in Black cult movies that cemented his wider popularity, as well as earning him tens of millions of dollars. 

An eighth generation Texan who is also a part-time cattle rancher, Jones made his directorial debut in the offbeat Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada. He has said that he  wanted to make a film about the oft-forgotten people of the border region he knows well. But of course it is his own portrayal of the tequila-drinking complex central character that lingers after the movie has ended. 

He lives on a ranch outside his hometown of San Saba with his third wife, Dawn Laurel.
/ENDS