Random Weird Things About Tommy Lee Jones, Hollywood's Most Grizzled Acto (19 items)

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  (#1) He Told Batman Forever Co-Star Jim Carrey He Hated Him

  Jim Carrey, who starred in Batman Forever with Tommy Lee Jones and noted fellow hackle-raiser Val Kilmer, told Howard Stern that Jones, far from being Two-Faced, told Carrey directly to his face what he thought of him.

  "I was really looking forward to working with Tommy because he was a fantastic actor, and he still is. I love him. I mean, he's amazing. But he was a little crusty… I think he was just a little freaked out because Dumb and Dumber had come out on the same weekend as Cobb, and Cobb was his big swing for the fences, pardon the pun. And that didn't work out, and it freaked him out. I think it made him... I walked into a restaurant the night before our big scene in the Riddler's lair and the maître d said, 'You're working with Tommy Lee Jones, aren't you?' I said, 'I am.' He said, 'He's in the back corner.' I said, 'Oh, great. I'll go say hello.' 

  And I went up to say hi and the blood drained from his face in such a way that I realized that I had become the face of his pain or something. And he got kind of shaking and hugged me and said, 'I hate you. I really don't like you.' And I was like, 'Wow, okay, what's going on, man?' And he said, 'I cannot sanction your buffoonery.'"

  Carrey has never slammed Jones for his remarks nor Jones treatment of him on set. but Batman Forever’s director Joel Schumacher called Jones a “bully.”
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  (#2) He's Big In Japan

  Jones has appeared in Boss coffee ads in Japan since 2006, in which he plays an alien who has different jobs, such as a train station employee and taxi driver. Watch the video. Seriously. He also appears in SoftBanks (a telecommunications and internet company) White Family ads.

  Tommy Lee Jones is clearly having a blast and the Japanese love him. He was the only foreigner to appear in a music video with Japanese celebrities to raise the country’s spirits after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. He visits the country regularly, even when he’s not promoting a film or working.  
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  (#3) He Has A Nice Long List Of Stuff You Can't Ask Him During Interviews

  There are a lot of things Jones won't talk about in interviews, including his marriages, his real estate holdings, his political views, his friendships, and other things interviewers painfully discover as they negotiate the mine field that is Tommy Lee Jones.

  Luckily, interviewers always know where they stand: Jones has no problem telling you if he finds your questions moronic or baffling.

  “Do you really think I sit around and ask myself questions like ‘How does success feel?’” as he snapped at Texas Monthly’s Skip Hollandsworth. 
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  (#4) At Harvard He Was Caught Between His Love Of Football And Desire To Act

  Jones played offensive guard and was All-Ivy League for an undefeated Harvard football team, during which time he participated in a legendary 1968 game against Yale known as “The Tie.” He recounts the legendary game in the documentary Harvard Beats Yale 29-29. 

  Given his love of football and desire to act, Jones found himself caught between these passions when he first arrived at Harvard. Unsure of whether to accept a role in a play or try go for the football team, he sought advice from the Harvard freshman football coach. Jones recounted the exchange in Interview Magazine,

  “'Look, I'm interested in acting. I auditioned for and have the chance to play a part in The Tempest. Do you think there's any chance that I'm going to be able to start on this football team? Because I'm looking at football and I'm looking at theater, and I want to know what my prospects are.'

  And he said, ‘I don't know how well you're going to do, but I can tell you that you've got four more years to play football, and you can be an actor for the rest of your life.’” 
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  (#5) He Likes To Make People Uncomfortable, Or So Alleged Josh Brolin In An Interview

  At the table read for Men in Black 3, Josh Brolin, playing a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones, made the mistake of sending regards to Jones from his wife Diane Lane and friend Charlize Theron. Lane co-starred with Jones in Lonesome Dove and Theron, In the Valley of Elah.

  "I said, ‘Hey, man, Charlize and Diane send their hellos.’ And there’s a long pause and he goes, ‘Okay.’ And I’m thinking, What kind of f*cking response is that? That’s the weirdest... I don’t know what to say,” Brolin told EW. ”That’s his genius: How can I make this the most uncomfortable moment anybody has ever had in the world?” 

  Wonder what he thought of Brolin’s performance? Probably nothing good. 
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  (#6) He Refused Acting Lessons

  “I don’t want to be told how to do it. I don’t think I could get along very well with a teacher unless I was absolutely convinced he was better than me. And I’m not all that convinced anyone would be,” he remarked to After Noon TV in 1972.

  Jones even got political, saying 

  “What I would do, and not talk about, if I was in the position to do so, would be to get rid of the Army and stop spending money on a war and preparation for war. In general, I think the government is in pretty bad shape on a national, state, and city level. The United States is on the way down and we’re going to get in some pretty bad trouble shortly."

  TLJ doesn't discuss politics anymore as a rule, and gets shirty when asked a question in that general zip code. Another bizarre thing, the interviewer in that 1972 piece repeatedly referred to him as "Tom." Today's TLJ would not be having that at all. 
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  (#7) He Has A Tailor On Savile Row In London

  Where does a legend get his fancy threads? London's legendary Savile Row, of course. The famous street is the home of some of the world’s most respected tailors. Henry Poole created the dinner jacket and tuxedo on Savile Row. Jones is a frequent visitor to London, and being a guy who loves luxury and finely made things, has his suits made there. He’s not shy about it, either.

  “I’m kind of pleased with myself that I’ve got a tailor on Savile Row. I’m 68 years old. I deserve it,” Jones told the Guardian. 
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  (#8) He Hates Labels – Especially Applied To His Movies

  While discussing The Homesman, a film he directed starring himself and Hilary Swank, Jones talk about the movie as “the inverse of the conventional western.” He explained to the Guardian, “It’s about women, not men; it’s about lunatics, not heroes; they’re traveling east, not west; and we have a different perspective on what has come to be called manifest destiny.”

  Although Jones went on to recognize that women are objectified and trivialized every day, he stopped short of calling the film a feminist piece. “It would not be unfair to call it that but I’m not looking for labels.” 

  And don’t call the film a Western, either. He hates that.

  “If you look at how people use the term 'Western,’ you can only conclude that it means a movie that has big hats and horses. And if you really want to sound like you’ve been thinking, then you’ll use a term like 'genre.’ But all the hell it seems to mean is big hats and horses. Which is not.... [stops to glare at the Telegraph interviewer] all that deeply analytical.”
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  (#9) He Wrote His Thesis About Flannery O’Connor

  Jones earned a scholarship to a Dallas prep school, St. Marks Schools of Texas (where he is a board member), then attended Harvard. His room was across the hall from Al Gore in Mower B-12 when they were freshmen. He got a BA in English lit and his senior thesis was on the mechanics of Catholicism in Flannery O’Connor’s Books. He graduated cum laude. 
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  (#10) He's Ad Libbed Some Of His Most Well Known Lines

  The Fugitive - Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) tells US Marshal Sam Gerard, "I didn't kill my wife." Jones ad libbed, "I don't care!" Surely, he had something to do with the “Think me up a cup of coffee and a chocolate doughnut with those little sprinkles on top” line? 

  Under Siege - William Strannix's speech after he loses his mind: "Saturday morning cartoons…" "This little piggy... " 

  Eyes of Laura Mars - John Neville's speech at the end of the movie.
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  (#11) Loretta Lynn’s Husband Taught Him How To Drive A Bulldozer

  In researching the role of Loretta Lynn’s husband in Coal Miner’s Daughter, Jones spent some time with Loretta's husband Doolittle. He taught Jones how to operate machinery his character would have used, and the memory of it made Jones smile very briefly during an interview with EW, and enthusiastically exlaim, "Yeah! He taught me how to drive that bulldozer. In fact, that bulldozer was his.”

  Note to interviewers: let him drive around on heavy machinery. The noise will also down out the awkward silence.
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  (#12) He’s Mentioned In Ripley’s Believe It Or Not For Landing An Agent And Part In 10 Days

  Only 10 days after graduating from Harvard in 1969, Jones moved to New York and landed an agent and Broadway debut (A Patriot for Me) so fast in he made it into Ripley’s Believe It or Not. 
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  (#13) He Was In The Film Adaptation Of A Novel In Which The Main Character Is Based On Him

  Jones’s first film was 1970’s Love Story starring Ryan O’Neal and Ali McGraw, which was based on a novel. According to the book’s author, Erich Segal, Jones was the model for male lead, Oliver Barrett (O'Neal), an athlete with the poetic soul. Segal disputed the rumor that Jones’s Harvard classmate Al Gore was also part of the inspiration (only the character's emotional baggage owes a debt to Gore).

  He further shot down the notion that Tipper Gore was the basis for Jenny (McGraw). Jones played Oliver's roommate, Hank.
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  (#14) He Was Considered To Play Snake Plissken

  Imagine Escape from New York with TLJ as a non-eyepatch wearing Snake. The eyepatch was Kurt Russell’s idea, an homage to John Wayne’s Rooster Cogburn in True Grit. The studio was reluctant to go with Russell and considered Jones and other heavy hitting names such as Chuck Norris and Charles Bronson as potential alternatives. 
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  (#15) He Did Four Seasons Of One Life To Live

  Jones played charming bachelor Mark Toland from 1971 to 1975 on One Life to Live. His tenure on the show ended when the character was killed off. Jones got to break bad on the show, taking the character from doctor to con artist and bad boy of Llanview. 
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  (#16) He Does Interviews but Doesn't Seem To Like It and Sometimes Answers Questions With Silence

  In the name of every actor who hates lazy/soft/silly/rote interviews, Jones is the god of being the most awkward hardass ever. Behold the crash-and-burn as he regards interviewers with deadpan aloofness. 

  The Globe and Mail’s Johanna Schneller recounts the story of Jones making a GQ colleague of hers cry. “They were at a ranch he owned in San Antonio, TX., and for two days he offered little but critiques of her questions and corrections of her grammar, while - I kid you not - cracking walnuts with his bare hands.”

  After all these years, it’s worth asking whether Jones should give questions to interviewers in advance, forego being interviewed at all, or simply let us all know he’s Andy Kaufman. But Jones would probably give a long, blank stare into abyss as the in lieu of an answer, so never mind. 
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  (#17) His First Acting Job Was Sneezy In The Second Grade

  Meryl Streep asked Tommy Lee Jones about his first acting job during a conversation they had for Interview Magazine: 

  JONES: I took that very seriously. Actually, that play was the beginning of my career in the media, as well, because in Rotan at that time, the radio station was above the drug store, and it wasn't very big. It was smaller than your trailer, but it had one of those radio microphones about the size of a dinner plate. And they brought the teacher, who was also the director, and the seven dwarfs into the radio station and lined us all up, and each actor was introduced and told to do something indicative of his character. She called my name and, of course, I sneezed. 

  STREEP: Wow, that's hard! Can you still sneeze on cue? 

  JONES: I can, but I charge more for it than I did when I was seven years old. I've been an actor ever since, really. 
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  (#18) Samuel L. Jackson Gets Tommy Lee Jones

  Jackson is Jones’s twin when it comes to telling it like it is. He explained why Jones comes off the way he does in interviews.

  "The Tommy Lee Jones you meet in person is intelligent, honest, earnest, and probably a lot funnier than you would imagine him to be. I’ve seen people come out of a room with Tommy Lee and their hair standing on end, because he just won’t let you ask him a stupid question.”
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  (#19) He's Really Into Polo (That Sport With Horses English Royalty Play, Not Ralph Lauren)

  For more than two decades, Jones has devoted considerable time to his favorite sport, polo. He has several large properties, including a polo ranch focused on hosting players from Harvard as well as royalty, and has fielded for two teams, one of which won the 1993 US Polo Association's Western Challenge Cup. "I think polo's the finest thing that a horse and a man can do together,” he said in an interview with The Globe and Mail. 

  In 2014, Jones told Polo+10

  “I always wanted to be an actor, and I guess my passion for polo has been fueled by what I’ve done in that respect, but more and more, as you get older, you look to the things that make you happy… really happy. And the fact is, I look back now and realize that the movie business has hurt my polo. To realize your full potential, you have to play all year round, and that’s just never been possible for me,” 

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