Tommy Lee Jones quotes
Born
September 15, 1946, San Saba, Texas, U.S.
Occupation
Actor, director.
Tommy Lee Jones is an American actor and director. He has received four Academy Award nominations, winning Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1993 thriller film The Fugitive.
Movies
Jason Bourne (2016)
Men in Black (1997)
No Country for Old Men (2007)
The Fugitive (1993)
My home town is very small and very remote and we don’t have a movie house.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I fear other actors who are not prepared. And I fear directors who are afraid.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I look upon pride as a sin.
– Tommy Lee Jones
The entire elementary school in Rotan, Texas, presented a theatrical production of ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ And the part of Sneezy fell to me.
– Tommy Lee Jones
Normal people with normal problems can be hilarious.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I’ve never really known what glamour is.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I have nothing against interviews. I don’t pursue them. When people I work for deem it appropriate, I’m perfectly willing to serve.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I still think probably the only thing I’m suited for is being a boy from Texas.
– Tommy Lee Jones
In the course of American history, great steps are taken by ordinary people, and ordinary people are not perfect.
– Tommy Lee Jones
Human beings are glorious and preposterous characters.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I’ve made some bad movies. And I really enjoyed it!
– Tommy Lee Jones
I play characters, and I try to play them in a manner that’s appropriate to the script. Physical movement and vitality of language is part of character.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I don’t analyze things like titles.
– Tommy Lee Jones
There’s an undeniable tradition of sexism in this country that ties into the move westward by people of European descent and different ways of looking at Manifest Destiny on the west side of the Mississippi River.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I don’t direct movies for a living.
– Tommy Lee Jones
As an actor I want to do as many takes as I can. I wanna shoot the scene… or shoot the shot ’til they make me quit.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I’m always happy to have a job.
– Tommy Lee Jones
Kindness and politeness are not overrated at all. They’re underused.
– Tommy Lee Jones
The most important question in American cinema, I’ve learned, is ‘When is lunch?’
– Tommy Lee Jones
Acting is fun for me and it doesn’t really matter how, whether it’s hard work or easy work, it’s always fun.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I think any thinking person should be worried about climate change.
– Tommy Lee Jones
As an actor to watch an audience of people howl together in a single mind as a result of work you’ve done together with friends is a privilege.
– Tommy Lee Jones
Partnerships are good engines for narrative.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I don’t do anything that is not fun. I just don’t do it.
– Tommy Lee Jones
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 Lee Jones
My grandmother grew up in a 19th-century world, and my daughter has grown up in a 21st-century world, and some issues, problems, dilemmas that these women face have not changed.
– Tommy Lee Jones
No director wants to be directed, but no good director… would shy away from the good ideas of others.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I felt like the luckiest kid in the world because God had put me on the ground in Texas. I actually felt sorry for those poor little kids that had to be born in Oklahoma or England or some place. I knew I was living in the best place in the world.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I don’t fight anybody anytime or anywhere.
– Tommy Lee Jones
My education as a filmmaker has been entirely practical. I started working professionally in the film business in 1970, and I’ve been at it steadily since, and I pay a lot of attention.
– Tommy Lee Jones
If you want to know about my politics, the only way to do that is to look at my work.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I like to make movies on the west side of the Mississippi River, and a lot of times, the movies I direct have horses and big hats in them and get called westerns, but that’s okay. I used to resent that, but I don’t anymore.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I’m a believer in belief. Faith is something that works – it causes people to do things, it has results. It’s an intangible, indefinable, very real thing. And it moves people, sometimes to atrocity. And sometimes to survival.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I’m an introspective guy when there’s money in it.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I always told my children when they whined… Only the boring are bored.
– Tommy Lee Jones
My idea in terms of managing a narrative, or in thinking in my creative life, is that you could easily argue that the past, the present and the future all occur simultaneously, and if you can postulate that, then you’re not strictly bound to a linear narrative.
– Tommy Lee Jones
You can’t instruct an audience to laugh, but what you can do is read well and understand the spirit and subtleties, if there are any, in the dialogue.
– Tommy Lee Jones
Football was a wonderful experience for me. It was a means of, oh, I don’t know, sustaining for much of my youth. In times of trouble, I’ve always had football. I always knew I was a football player. And that was a comfort on many occasions.
– Tommy Lee Jones
The quality of one’s emotional life changes over the years, doesn’t it? But the basic instincts and desires, greed and hope, seem to remain constant. In the larger scope of things, there’s a sense of fulfillment to living a creative life. So I guess that’s what keeps me going.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I know a lot of cowboys and I’ve done a little work on ranches with cattle, and those people become your friends, and keep their word.
– Tommy Lee Jones
As a child of West Texas, I identify with Hispanic culture every bit as much as I do North American culture.
– Tommy Lee Jones
Characters with no integrity are just as interesting as characters with lots of integrity.
– Tommy Lee Jones
What appeals to me? There are things, points of view, uses of the language, habits of dress, ways of thought and believing that came to me from my grandparents and came to them from theirs. Things that are of good use in any situation, no matter what the future may hold.
– Tommy Lee Jones
I’ve worked with more than 50 directors ,and I’ve paid attention since day one. That’s pretty much been my education, apart from studying art history and shooting with my own cameras. I’ve seen 50 different sets of mistakes and 50 different ways of achieving. You just leave the bad part out.
– Tommy Lee Jones