SUCCESS HASN'T MELLOWED TOMMY LEE JONES
Tommy Lee Jones is on his best behavior. Maybe because he brought his beautiful wife Kimberlea Jones along to hold him in check? He hasn't bitten anyone all morning.
The San Antonio actor sometimes uses his laser-sharp sarcasm, imposing size and glaring intensity to reduce interviewers to frustrated, quivering jelly. This talent had reached near-legendary proportions even before this year's Oscar ceremony, when he sullenly snapped at questions about his award for The Fugitive. This morning's pastime for journalists waiting to chat with Jones is exchanging favorite Jones-interview horror stories. There's seldom a lull in the conversation.
``It would be a mistake to approach Jones in a sycophantic way,'' Stephen Hopkins says in a later interview. ``You have to stand up for what you want, and that's respected by him.''
Hopkins directed Jones in Blown Away, an action movie that opened Friday. Jones was Hopkins' first choice to play the film's brilliant, vengeful villain, a bomber out to blow up Boston just for the malicious fun of breaking the spirit of one man on the city's bomb squad.
When Jones arrives, he's downright polite and accompanied by his svelte and lovely wife.
True, he is often visibly disgusted with questions. When asked about his former Harvard roommate, Vice President Al Gore, he gives off a twin-beam glare. But he checks himself, seeming to count to 10, and offers some kind of response.
Asked why he went into acting, he shoots back, ``It's easy and pays a hell of a lot of money to me. I want to give Kimberlea and our children everything I want them to have in this life."
``Really that's a very hard question to answer,'' he adds more gently as he kisses his wife's hand.
Dressed impeccably in a navy-blue suit, white shirt and subtle red-and-blue tie, Jones looks like the publicity-hungry federal prosecutor he plays in The Client, the film version of John Grisham's bestseller that opens soon.
If a woman mellows a man, Jones should be a lap puppy by now, seeing how he adores his wife Kimberlea. After thirteen years of marriage, he still holds her hand, pulls up her chair when she sits, pushes wisps of hair out of her face, and quick kisses her when she laughs so heartily. They gaze at each other still with that newlywed look of excitement and love. Even if Tommy Lee isn't a future success as he expects to be in his movie career, he has to know how successful he has been at finding a wife such as Kimberlea.
In 1992, Tommy Lee ate up the screen as a crazed but humorous villain in Under Siege, stealing the show from Steven Seagal. He did the same to superstar Harrison Ford last year in The Fugitive.
