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Keeping up with Jones

Tommy Lee Jones in The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada
  • Posted at 3:47pm
  • 15 February 2008
  • by AndrewCollins-RT

Go on, admit it – when Tommy Lee Jones appeared in Clint Eastwood's geriatric astronaut caper Space Cowboys (he was the baby of the group at 54), you thought it was all over. Not his career, which was soaring, but his credibility. After more than 20 years, films like Batman Forever and Men in Black had left the granite-faced Texan financially secure for life.

His acting ability was never in doubt – his role as murderer Gary Gilmore in the 1982 TV movie The Executioner’s Song won him an Emmy – but box-office bankability seemed unlikely for the weatherbeaten character actor. Then, in his late forties, when his Oscar-winning turn as a US marshal in The Fugitive blasted him to the front of the casting queue, Jones settled into lighter roles with ease. His price tag rocketed from $7 million for Men in Black to $20 million for Men in Black 2.

And better was to come. His directorial debut Good Old Boys (1995) was followed a decade later by the much-admired western drama The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, in which he also stars.

His world-weary performance as the sheriff in the Coen brothers' award-winning No Country for Old Men signals a real acting renaissance for the former Man in Black. And he's now earned his third Oscar nomination for the drama In the Valley of Elah.

In the autumn of his life, Tommy Lee Jones is blossoming.

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