Tommy Lee Jones
Since I watched the Eyes of Laura Mars I have been completely enchanted with this actor. Not only for his strong and commanding presence (that helps) but also for being such a versatile actor.
A lot of people remember him for his role as Sam Gerard, in the movie The Fugitive. I agree that it was a very entertaining movie, but again, Mr. Jones has had much better and outstanding performances.
I respect the fact that he has showed us that he takes on different roles as challenges. It is true that most of his characters in the movies are
"tough guys", but even then he manages to give each and every one of them a different personality, a different trend, a different way for us to look at them and realize, in some cases, that there are people like this fictitious person portrayed in a movie that maybe lives close to us or is even is related to us. This is because he shows the humanity in all of his character, he creates a person and then, he gives that to us.There are other actors (we all now) that we like for one reason or the other; but I've found the most of the actors that people tend to remember, get attached to them, etc. always give some part of their personality to the character. Now, I am not an actress. I have never taken any acting lessons; but I prefer the fact that Mr. Jones does not bring the character or role to him, he brings himself into the character. This is the reason why he is able to portrait so many different roles with diverse personalities and appearances. To name a few:
|
Movie |
Character |
Brief Description |
|
The Executioner's Song |
Gary Gilmore (Biography) |
Mass Murderer |
|
The Betsy |
Angelo Perino |
Car Racer, Business Man |
|
The Good Old Boys |
Hewey Calloway |
A simple man, a cowboy |
|
Eyes of Laura Mars |
John Neville |
Multiple Personalities |
|
Cobb |
Ty Cobb (Biography) |
Baseball player |
|
Volcano |
Mike Roark |
Concern citizen and Daddy |
|
Lonesome Dove |
Capt. W. Call |
Cowboy |
|
Blue Sky |
Capt. Hank Marshal |
Loving husband |
|
The Amazing Howard Hughes |
Howard Hughes (Biography) |
An eccentric millionaire |
The list goes on and on, these are only my some of my favorites. I am sure that you can add more to this list.
I am glad that he won the Oscar for the Fugitive, although I feel that he should have won an Oscar before that. He is one of the few serious actors left in Hollywood and that is maybe the reason why he has not gotten the recognition he deserves (am I being partial here?).
