Never took an acting class.

He and Al Gore were roommates while the two were students at Harvard University. The two remain close friends.

Part time cattle rancher, owns 3,000-acre ranch near San Antonio, TX.

Plays and raises polo ponies. His team won the U.S. Polo Association's Western Challenge Cup (1993). Invites Harvard's best polo players to his ranch to practice each fall.

Father's name was Clyde L. He did not have a middle name, just an initial.

Father, with Kimberlea Gayle (Cloughley) Jones, of Austin Leonard Jones (b. 1983) and Victoria Kafka Jones (b. 1991)

Real life son Austin played his son, Tommy, in Yuri Nosenko, KGB (1986) (TV)

According to author Erich Segal, Jones and his then Harvard roommate Al Gore, were the models for the character of Oliver in Love Story (1970).

(30 October 1998) Injured after falling from horse during polo match.

Writes most of his own most memorable lines in films: Fugitive, The (1993)... when Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) tells Marshal Gerard, "I didn't kill my wife," Gerard replies, "I don't care!" Under Siege (1992)... William Strannix's speech after he loses his mind: "Saturday morning cartoons... This little piggy... " _Eyes of Laura Mars (1978)_... John Neville's revealing speech at the end of the movie.

Good friends with: Al Gore, Willie Nelson, Gary Busey, Oliver Stone and Robert Duvall.

His ex-wife, Kate Lardner, is Ring Lardner's granddaughter.

   Born on the 15th September, 1946 in the Texas town of San Saba, in a nursing home as there were no hospitals around for about 80 miles.   Father's name was Clyde C. Jones, a  hard drinking oil man who worked in the local oil fields of Texas and in Libya.  Mother is Lucille Marie Jones, maiden name of Scott,  (known as Marie), who worked in a beauty shop and later became a police woman. Clyde and Marie were married  in 1945. The marriage was difficult at times due to Clyde's drinking. When Tommy Lee was four, in 1950, Marie gave birth to another son, David Michael, who passed away shortly after his birth.  Marie divorced Clyde and they later remarried in 1968. They divorced again in 1974.

Clyde died of heart disease at age 60, in 1986. He married two more times after his second divorce from Marie.  Marie eventually married Carlton Braden who left her a widow in 1997. Marie now lives in San Antonio near her two grandchildren and Tommy Lee.

  At the age of thirteen Tommy Lee started playing tackle football at Alamo Junior High in Midland. He attended St. Mark's School of Texas where he continued to play football but also drifted into acting.

"One day I happened to walk into a practice room and came upon a rehearsal of 'Mister Roberts'. Almost immediately, I started acting in plays - 'Under Milk Wood', 'The Caine Mutiny'. My feelings at this discovery were indescribable."

    In 1965 it was off to Harvard where he played football as offensive guard, acted in the Harvard Drama Club and graduated in 1969 cum laude in English and American literature. His roommates at Harvard were one Albert Gore and the actor John Lithgow. Then came summer rep in Cambridge and Boston then Tommy Lee decided to pursue an acting career in New York.  During his first year or so in New York Tommy Lee met and married Katherine Lardner, a fellow actor and later writer who was the granddaughter of sportswriter Ring Lardner. She had two children from a previous union. This marriage to Kate Lardner fell apart in 1977 and they divorced in 1978 when it was discovered that Tommy Lee was sharing a home with model Lisa Taylor and dividing his time between Lisa and Kate. The marriage lasted seven years and even to this day Tommy Lee is still loath to discuss it.

    Whilst still in New York Tommy Lee found work in the soap opera "One Life to Live" in which he played the role of Dr. Mark Toland from 1971 - 1975. During this time he was still doing plays at night but this lifestyle soon bored him and he  realised that working in the theater and in television soaps was really getting him nowhere. As he told the New York Times in 1993,

    "I was bumping against a ceiling in the theater. I was reasonably well known as a young actor but Broadway was going through a phase of decay. The plays were getting bigger, broader, less dramatic and coarser........ If I wanted my creative life to grow, the marketplace was telling me I needed to be more famous."

So Tommy Lee and Katherine left for Los Angeles.  Came various film roles such as "Jackson County Jail", "The Amazing Howard Hughes" and "The Betsy".

    For some time after his divorce from Kate,  Jones followed the usual Hollywood lifestyle, driving flashy cars and being seen around with various starlets on his arm, a phase totally out of a character for someone who professes to be a very private man. He ultimately caught the eye of Kimberlea Gayle Cloughley whilst working on the movie "Back Roads".  They were married on May 30, 1981 in Austin, they had their reception at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, lived at Lake Austin when they were first married and became the proud parents of Austin aka 'Bubba', born in 1983 in New Zealand while Tommy Lee was filming "Nate and Hayes".  Victoria aka 'Tory' was born in 1991. He raises polo ponies and brangus cattle in-between acting assignments and guards his privacy zealously. He is notoriously short tempered and grumpy with journalists and has been called "difficult to work with" by fellow actors.  He has a home in San Antonio and a home in Florida where he plays polo most of the time. Has finished work on production of "The 3 Burials of Melquiades Estrada" of which he is also the director. He won the Best Actor award at Cannes for 3B. Starred as the Axeman in the 2006 movie "Prairie Home Companion", and 2007 saw him in movie roles that look set to garner him numerous awards. "No Country for Old Men" in which he plays Sheriff Ed Tom Bell is nominated for numerous awards at all this years big award events and "In The Valley of Elah" in which he plays Hank Deerfield sees Tommy nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor. Let's keep our fingers crossed for Oscar night!

Production has recently completed on "In The Electric Mist" in which he plays Dave Robicheaux - due for a 2008 release but no firm dates as yet.

HUMBLE DISCLAIMER; This site is in no way affiliated with Tommy Lee Jones or any member of his organisation thereof, never will be and is unlikely to be so in the forseeable future...... total bummer or what!!!!!!!!!

DEBBIE IRONMONGER 2001-2008