A SIMPLE MAN, A SIMPLE ACTOR
Jones snarls his way to stardom
SAN ANTONIO - At precisely 9 a.m., Tommy Lee Jones strides quickly into the lobby of La Mansion del Rio Hotel and impatiently enters a suite set up for breakfast. Except for the dark wraparound glasses, the actor could be just another Texas banker in his black boots, suit, white shirt and tie.
He removes his jacket and puts some fresh fruit on a plate. There is a knock at the door. He rushes over and flings it open. A chambermaid stands nervously outside.
"Yes, what do you want?" he barks.
"Spray the room?" she asks timidly, holding up a metal canister of air freshener.
"Spray? Spray?" he demands of the startled woman. "We don't need any spray. Go away!"
She shrinks away.
Hey, it's Tommy Lee.
Tommy Lee Jones has, for years in films and television,
rendered vivid, menacing portrayals of villains and assorted psychopaths and eccentrics - from Clay Shaw to Howard Hughes to Gary Gilmore. With his battered face and lithe former football player's body, Jones has the versatility to shift easily from violent and over-the-edge characters to restrained, ordinary, even warm guys in leading and supporting roles. Yet
full-fledged stardom has eluded him, partly because too
many of his films faltered.
With The Fugitive, which stars Harrison Ford, opening on
Friday, and three other high-profile films due in the next 12 months, the 46-year-old actor appears on the verge of a career breakthrough. His most recent film, Under Siege, an action-adventure starring Steven Seagal, was a surprise hit last year. Jones and his other co-star, Gary Busey, virtually ran away with the movie as two nutty terrorists who hijack a battleship.
In The Fugitive Jones plays United States Marshal Sam
Gerard, the relentless pursuer of the wrongly convicted
Dr. Richard Kimble (Ford). Gerard is a steely, stubborn,
sometimes volatile lawman who drives his colleagues
almost as strongly as he drives himself and who emerges
as a surprisingly sympathetic figure.
The film was directed by Andrew Davis, who also directed
Under Siege, and is based on the classic television series starring David Janssen.
When Jones faces an interviewer he is irascible and bullying one moment, charming the next. He despises interviews and rarely gives them, except, he says, when his employers ask.
Typically, Jones doesn't want to talk much about his character in The Fugitive.
"What appealed to me was working for Warner Brothers,
working for Andy Davis and working with Harrison Ford,"
he says tersely. He frowns. "It was a collaborative atmosphere. We created the characters as we went along. The screenplay tended to change every day."
Though he lives with his wife and two children only 15
minutes away, Jones has agreed to talk only in the anonymity of a hotel suite. And the response to some seemingly harmless questions may be a blast of anger.
"Do I play only bad guys? Do I play only violent guys? How can you categorize me? What pictures come to mind?"
Well, his most recent films include Oliver Stone's J.F.K., for which he was nominated for a best-supporting-actor Oscar for his performance as the devious Clay Shaw, and Under Siege, in which he played a diabolical if funny madman.
"Villains! O.K.! Now you got me categorized. You happy?
"I don't play just villains," he adds. "I like to have parts that are not simply villains. And I find this entire subject, you know, just very uncomfortable and borderline stupid."
Another subject.
San Antonio is a graceful city, but does living here limit his career? You know, out of sight, out of mind.
"It's a fiction," he says furiously. "What do you mean sight'? What are you talking about `sight?' "Don't most actors live in Los Angeles or New York? They do? I don't know. I see them on movie sets. I don't know where they live."
Ask Jones about Harvard, his alma mater, and he practically explodes.
You majored in English. English literature? What kind of
English?
"The kind we're using now," he replies tensely.
Another question about Harvard leads to an outburst. "I
don't understand the line of questioning," he says. "I don't get it. If you're saying, Tommy Lee, you don't fit the image of the East Coast, social elitist wealthy people who comprise Harvard, the only thing I can say is you have no idea what comprises Harvard."
Tommy, you don't like interviews, do you?
"I have nothing against interviews," he says. "I don't pursue them. When people I work for deem it appropriate, I'm perfectly willing to serve."
Twenty minutes later, after more thrusting and parrying, the actor offers to take a visitor on a walk downtown to he tourist landmark the Alamo. "This is a very, very polite town," says Jones, who attracts a few glances on College Street. "We live in a nice neighborhood. It's a sweet old lady of a town. Not all star-struck. We sure appreciate it."
Jones also has a large cattle ranch in San Saba, his birthplace, which is north of San Antonio. (In the fall, the Harvard polo team practices at the ranch.) But most of his free time is spent in his home in northeast San Antonio. He met his wife, Kimberlea, who is from here, on a set in the early 1980s when she worked briefly as an extra after graduating from the University of Texas School of Journalism. They have two children, Austin Leonard, 10, and Victoria, 2.
To Jones, the San Antonio region and West Texas generally are ingrained in his blood. "It's been said that people from out here spend the first half of their life trying to get away and the second half trying to get back," he says.
If Jones's life has its contradictions, he brushes them aside with annoyance.
He is the only child of an oil drilling contractor and a housewife who worked briefly as a police officer. But he
attended one of Dallas's more elite prep schools, the St. Mark's School of Texas, and went on to Harvard, where he majored in English, played football, became a close friend of Al Gore and graduated cum laude in 1969.
(Jones, who has visited Gore in Tennessee over the years, campaigned for the Clinton-Gore ticket in West Texas.)
Although Jones shies from personal talk, he seems content to discuss acting in vague terms. He became interested in drama in prep school, immersed himself in Cambridge and Boston theater when he went to college, never took an acting lesson in his life and acknowledges that he had a relatively easy time in the New York theatrical world in the 1970s, after which he moved to Los Angeles.
His first movie role was in Roger Corman's 1976 film
Jackson County Jail. After a series of film roles, his 1982 portrayal of Gary Gilmore in the television film The Executioner's Song won him an Emmy. At the moment, the future is rosy for the actor. He will co-star in Oliver Stone's Heaven and Earth, due in December, in which he plays the husband of a Vietnamese woman. Filming begins soon on Joel Schumacher's version of the John Grisham best seller The Client, in which Jones plays a United States attorney opposite Susan Sarandon. He is now completing another Oliver Stone
film, Natural Born Killers, in which he is a prison warden. ("It's a satire on the subject of violence in America," he says.)
And in the fall, work starts on Blown Away, in which he
co-stars as a political terrorist with his friend Jeff Bridges. Next spring, Jones plans to direct a TNT adaptation of the Elmer Kelton novel The Good Old Boys, a saga about West Texas.
Working with Jones, says Davis, the director, is a
powerful experience. "He's very disciplined, and you can
do nine takes with him and they'll all be different and all be fascinating. He loves actors. He has the veneer of a tough guy, his face and voice are very strong, but he can play a soft, gentle character very well.
For his part, Jones refuses to analyze himself or his acting. Asked why acting appealed to him, he shrugs.
"The simple answer is it seemed like fun. The complicated answer is it has to do with an enjoyment of and necessity for a vital imagination. But I'm not that analytical. I'll stick with the simple answer. It's fun."
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