Tommy Lee Jones on Will Smith

The Hudson Union Society™ www.hudsonunionsociety.com is where todays leaders come to discuss tomorrows ideas. If you live not too far away from New York City, please join us in person. In 2008 Tommy Lee Jones was nominated for two Oscars. Tommy Lee Jones emerged to become one of the most admired and respected film stars of his generation by winning the Oscar and receiving four Academy Award nominations. An Emmy award win for Lonesome Dove (CBS, 1989) raised his fortunes for good, leading to defining film roles in JFK, The Fugitive and Men in Black. This year Jones found himself the talk of Oscar buzz once again with empathetic performances in No Country For Old Men and In the Valley of Elah, both of which affirmed his status as an actor able to deliver some of the most powerful and nuanced performances of recent memory. 

He was overshadowed by Sissy Spaceks Oscar-winning performance as country-western singer Loretta Lynn in Coal Miners Daughter. In The Fugitive, Jones played a crafty and relentless U.S. marshal on the hunt for an escaped convict (Harrison Ford) trying to prove his innocence after being convicted of murdering his wife. Come award season, Jones found himself the winner of a Golden Globe and an Oscar for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role. Then he took the world by storm in Men in Black", which chronicles two alien busters (Jones and Will Smith) in the pan-galactic version of Immigration and Naturalization Services (INS) who track down and subdue extraterrestrial invaders, "neutralizing" any witnesses (with the enormous ray guns atop their 1962 Ford LTDs) into believing the saucer that just flew by was St. Elmo's fire or swamp gas. Played with maximum tongue-in-cheek kitsch, Jones' Agent Kay with his dead pan comic sense was the perfect foil for Smith's smart-alecky freshness. 

In 2007, Jones had perhaps his best year to date in front of the camera. For In the Valley of Elah (2007), he played a former military MP who goes in search of his son an Iraq war veteran after receiving a call that hes gone AWOL. The father teams up with a reluctant police detective (Charlize Theron) and, along the way, discovers that his son may have been murdered. Jones gave a muted and agonizing performance as a grieving father learning the truth behind his sons time spent in Iraq, rightfully earning heaps of critical praise and several award nominations, including one for an Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Right on the heels of Elah came No Country For Old Men (2007), a bleak, but tense crime thriller about a down-and-out Vietnam vet (Josh Brolin) who finds a briefcase containing $2 million in the desert near the remains of a bloody drug deal gone bad. Taking the satchel of cash only makes Moss life worse, forcing him to elude all manner of pursuers, including a deadly assassin (Javier Bardem) who flips coins for human lives and an aging sheriff (Jones) at the end of his tether. For his work, Jones earned nominations at the Golden Globes and Screen Actors Guild Awards for Best Supporting Actor.

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