Happy 75th Birthday to Tommy Lee Jones! Anyone else a fan?

I love him! Love his unfussy approach, love his delivery, love his whole look - he's a perfect screen actor.

And I suggest every fan to watch his DP/30 interview which is one of the greatest 'I don't wanna be here' interviews I've seen!

Al Gore looks like a statue or a really good wax work in that picture.

I feel like this man has been seventy-five for the last quarter-century.

Love him.

I don't care. 

HBD! Fav perfs...

The Sunset Limited
The Homesman
Lonesome Dove
Cobb
Coal Miner’s Daughter
The Executioner’s Song
The Fugitive
NCFOM

and there are a bunch more I like too. JFK, Lincoln, Barn Burning, The Client, Space Cowboys, Good Old Boys, MiB.  Great, serious, effortlessly daunting actor but his best stuff is when he's frailer (Sunset Limited, Homesman) or, rare for him, madly charming (Cobb). I put him neck and neck with Duvall. I'm a fan... underrated director too... needs a good, substantial role to do next, been dim since 2014...

He thought the same. Boy, did he look pissed. 

I wasn't on the IMDB boards back then.   But I read on another movie forum that went belly up where posters were overwhelmingly saying he was nominated for the wrong movie and should have got nominated for Best Supporting Actor for No Country For Old Men.   I remember being in the small minority on the forum supporting his Oscar nom for In the Valley of Elah.  Such an underrated performance and well deserved Oscar nom for Best Actor.   I also pointed out to them that Javier Bardem was the big favorite to win Best Supporting Actor for NCFOM and he of course did.  IMO the Oscars got it right that year.  

I think he's directed 4 (?) and I think they're all pretty good or better  than that -  he definitely has a feel for how to direct other actors and himself and where to place the camera too:

Three Burials is one of his best performances and he knows how to frame the whole piece and position himself within it for maximum effect............  In Sunset Limited which is straight up great - especially if you're feeling a little down or philosophical - it has a lot of McCarthy's most direct (and dark) writing in it - and TLJ doesn't try to make "not like a play" either - he's really clever in how he uses close-ups in that one  -  like there are an insane amount of tight focus shots on both actors and that's definitely a choice he made - the way him and SLJ's faces react when the other is talking (especially) actually helps both performances be much better imo..........sometimes the words are like punches (see SLJ below covering up ........because TLJ won't stop talking and what he's saying is........pretty hard to take) .......  it's an actors showcase......would love to hear your thoughts when you see it......

Iirc the first thing he ever directed was The Good Old Boys on TV and that cast is amazing - Sissy Spacek, Frances McDormand, Bruce McGill, Matt Damon, Sam Shepard.........like he learned how to direct actors by being around all these talented people that first time......that one is a little slow but it's pretty good too which is how I feel about The Homesman also .....I don't think any actor in any of his 4 movies isn't at least "good" (?) and several are a lot better  than just good ...........

Ha good point.  Kind of a dumb question to ask. Only one I could think of is maybe just  Jim Carrey.   Tommy Lee Jones didn't get along with Carrey when they were filming Batman Forever together.  It seemed more a lot more one sided "feud" though cause Carrey says he still loves the guy and probably felt Tommy Lee Jones wasn't into that wacky comic book movie.  Carrey handled it well imo . 


The situation came to a head in the middle of production, before the two had their “biggest scene together” on the Joel Schumacher film, when Carrey randomly popped into the same restaurant that Jones was having dinner, he told Macdonald.

“The maitre said, ‘Oh, I hear you’re working with Tommy Lee Jones. He’s over in the corner having dinner.’ I went over and I said, ‘Hey Tommy, how are you doing?’ and the blood just drained from his face,” Carrey said. “And he got up shaking — he must have been in mid kill me fantasy or something like that. And he went to hug me and he said, ‘I hate you. I really don’t like you.’ And I said, ‘What’s the problem?’ and pulled up a chair, which probably wasn’t smart. And he said, ‘I cannot sanction your buffoonery.'”

Macdonald said Jones’ ire likely came from Carrey, who had risen quickly to become a huge star, being the center of attention no matter the room he entered.

Carrey had a different theory.

“He might have been uncomfortable doing that work, too,” he said. “That’s not really his style of stuff.”
www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-news/tommy-lee-jones-hated-working-jim-carrey-batman-forever-1045176/

I would have loved to be a fly on the wall in that restaurant during that.

Hm, I think it's pretty clear what he was aiming for in Batman Forever - after the darker Burton stuff Schumacher clearly decided to make a pretty damn campy and OTT movie (in retrospect I'm pretty shocked that the studio was so on board - good times!), so TLJ was just being part of that big budget live action cartoon that Schumacher had envisioned. Now, it's indeed reasonable to think that such flamboyant characterizations aren't really his thing, yeah. I think it's all summed up by that story Jim Carrey told where he approached TJL in a restaurant while that movie was being made and TJL started shaking and said to him "I hate you. I really don’t like you. I cannot sanction your buffoonery."

I think it's a combination of being a bit uncomfortable in the role and also feeling that Carrey was easily upstaging him because to Carrey the OTT cartoonishness is something he could back then do in his sleep. But I still think TLJ was a trooper there - to me he fit right in with the whole vibe of that movie. He kinda prepared for it in Natural Born Killers too, I think