Tommy Lee Jones is a well-known and respected actor and director who has been in the business for many years. He was a football star in his college days, but instead of starting a sports career, he moved to New York and started acting instead, where he made his Broadway debut. The first movie role he landed was a student in love storyis coincidentally written with Jones as a source of inspiration for his character.
As he started earning nominations for his performances, Jones became a more popular and recognizable actor. His career started to get better and he starred in many blockbuster movies that made him an iconic actor. Throughout his career, he starred in many action movies, but he was not just limited to these, sometimes he played roles in political movies or gloomy, also quite dramas, and even directed a handful of excellent movies including the three great movies The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, The Sunset Limitedand the house man. However, no matter what he acted in, he fully embraced his role and made many memorable films.
7 The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada is partly inspired by the real-life murder of a teen in Texas, and partly inspired by Faulkner’s famous novel While I lay dying. Estrada works as a cowboy in Texas and shoots a nearby coyote before stepping into his herd of goats. Norton, a nearby border patrol, considers the shooting an assault and shoots at Estrada, killing him. Rather than report this and get in trouble, Norton buries the body to hide the evidence. His body is later found and reburied in a local cemetery, but evidence that the border patrol may have killed him is ignored by the sheriff. Peter Perkins, learning that Norton killed his friend, kidnaps Norton and forces him to go on a journey while taking Estrada’s body back to his hometown.
Jones has two roles in this film: not only does he play Perkins, but he is also the director of the film. He knows exactly how to play the part of the vengeful friend who doesn’t really care what happens to his prisoner and just wants to take care of his friend’s dying wish. At the Cannes Film Festival, where the film debuted, Jones won the Best Actor award, with his film nominated for the prestigious Palme d’Or. The film remains a masterful example of neo-Western cinema and remains terrifyingly tense to this day.
6 Lincoln
The historical drama Lincoln is a biographical film about the last four months of President Lincoln’s life. It is loosely based on Team of Rivals: Abraham Lincoln’s Political Genius, a biography written by Doris Kearns Goodwin. The last four months of Lincoln’s life were arguably some of the most important and remembered moments of his presidency, besides the Emancipation Proclamation. With the Civil War nearing an end, Lincoln fears the return of the Confederate states would mean ignoring his proclamation, so he hopes it will be passed as the Thirteenth Amendment before that happens.
The film describes Lincoln’s difficulties in abolishing slavery in the country. Jones plays Thaddeus Stevens, a supporting role in the House of Representatives. Stevens represents a critical moment in the House debate as he argues for the amendment just as the Confederacy is on its way to discuss the terms for peace, the last moment Lincoln must have the amendment passed without them. Jones steps up to the board and delivers this pivotal speech in an unforgettable way. He received nominations for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes and Satellite Awards.
5 Miner’s daughter
Another biographical movie, Miner’s daughter is also a kind of musical, which tells the story of country singer Loretta Lynn. The film begins in her early teens and shows how she started out in a poor family with several siblings, and got married at the age of 15. At 19, she is already a mother of four and occasionally starts singing at local honky tonks and radio stations on weekends. Norm Burley, owner of record label Zero Records, hears Loretta sing on one of her radio appearances and gives her and her husband the money they need to travel to LA, where a demo of her first single is being made. They consider going on a promotional tour to break the record, but disaster strikes, fame knocks and life gets hectic.
Jones plays Doolittle Lynn, Loretta Lynn’s husband. As the one who supports Lynn and brings tough issues into her life, Jones shows us how both can still work side by side and really shows the facets of who Doolittle was as a person. He’s sensual but also firm here, where he also earned his first Golden Globe nomination for his performance.
4 JFK
JFK is a conspiracy theory political thriller that examines the events leading up to the assassination of John F. Kennedy and its alleged cover through the eyes of a former District Attorney Jim Garrison, adapted from the books On the trail of the killers and Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy. After Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested for the murder of a police officer, and also suspected of being Kennedy’s killer, he is murdered. Jim Garrison and his team begin to investigate possible links to the JFK murder in New Orleans, but the federal government rejects the investigation and it is shut down.
Years later, he reopens it after reading the Warren Report, assuming it contains multiple inaccuracies. Now he tries one more time to see if he can find out what really happened, assuming Oswald was framed by the government. Jones plays Clay Shaw, the person Garrison’s investigation leads him to and who he’s trying to bring to justice for the actual murder. With the way Jones played Shaw, it’s impossible to say whether he was really guilty or not, no matter what the court’s last verdict was. With a surprising flamboyance and queer Southern charm, I’m an endlessly interesting character to which Jones brings a lot of depth. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the Oscars and BAFTAs.
3 Men in black
Men in black could well be one of the most iconic movies Jones has starred in. The Men in Black is a secret government organization that was founded after first contact with aliens in the 1960s. They monitor alien activity on Earth because the public doesn’t know, and shouldn’t find out, that there are some aliens hidden between them, disguised as humans. Agent J is recruited into the Men in Black as a new member and together with his partner, Agent K, they investigate an alien crash in upstate New York. There they find a hostile creature looking for something that he and his race can use to end another alien race, and they must try to stop him before it’s too late.
Jones plays Agent K, the seasoned officer who is put to the test with the new man. He comes across as a tough, aloof dude, but Jones shows us that he still has a bit of a soft side when he cares about Agent J’s well-being. He received a nomination for Best Supporting Actor at the Satellite Awards.
2 The refugee
The action thriller The refugee is based on the 1960s TV series of the same name, but is so much more realistic and exciting than that series. Chicago surgeon Richard Kimble returns home to find that his wife has been fatally injured by an intruder with a prosthetic arm. After struggling with her killer, he loses and the killer escapes, leaving little evidence. However, the evidence they did have wrongly accused Kimble as the murdered, who is arrested, convicted and given the death penalty. He and his fellow inmates try to escape while being transported to death row, and while they don’t all make it alive, Kimble survives the escape attempt and manages to evade the police as well, returning to Chicago to hunt for the real killer, take revenge and clear his name.
Jones plays Deputy US Marshal Sam Gerard, who can be seen as an antagonist for the film. He spends his time chasing Kimble after his escape and tries to arrest him again. It’s a complicated role to chase the man you teach to prove his innocence, but Jones doesn’t hesitate and brings his A-game to the screen. He won the Oscar and Golden Globes for Best Supporting Actor and was nominated for the same award at the BAFTAs.
1 No country for old men
No country for old men is a neo-western based on a book of the same name. It follows the stories of three men whose lives intersect: Llewelyn Moss, a veteran, Anton Chigurh, a hit man, and Ed Tom Bell, a sheriff. Moss is hunting in the desert when he comes across a busted drug deal, with multiple deaths and a $2 million suitcase. He takes the money for himself but is quickly chased, suddenly on the run trying to keep the money. Chigurh is hired to get the money back now that Moss has it, and searches the currently abandoned house for it. This break-in catches Bell’s attention and leads him to follow on the trail as well.
Jones plays Bell, the sheriff who tries to pick up the crime. While his story may seem outdone by Moss and Chigurh, there’s a strong argument that Jones is actually the centerpiece of the film, not just in a dramatic sense, but in thematic and ethical ways, something the ending of No country for old men makes it somewhat clear. Jones still does a phenomenal job of showing an honest cop struggling and failing to figure out and stop the violent crimes he suddenly seems surrounded by. He really is one of the ‘old men’ without a country here and his melancholic, slightly humorous, tough performance is nothing short of perfect. He won a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actor.