Explore Quotes by 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.

I try to be as good a director as I possibly can. I try to be prepared, and I hope everyone else is. The preparation, I suppose, means just about everything. Little things mean a lot.

It's important for me as an actor to know the entire script before you start shooting, and especially if you're directing, you don't want to be struggling with anything.

You should never ask a horse or an actor to do something they cannot do. Wisdom will teach you to find out what they can do and then make it easy for them.

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.

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.

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 all that deeply analytical.

I don't have a favorite genre. I think 'genre' is a literary term. I don't have a favorite kind or type of movie. I like the ones that are good.

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.

I've never really known what glamour is.

I've worked with some very good directors and some very bad ones. I learned a great deal from both. From the bad, untalented people, you learn what not to do. And when you work with very highly talented people, you want to emulate them.

I've worked in the film business for 45 years, and I want to keep on growing as a filmmaker. I want to see my visual life grow and be increasingly effective in this world.

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.

I'm an introspective guy when there's money in it.

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.

How do you play someone in a movie? How do you do that? It's impossible - unless you know how. How do you cut somebody open and take out their appendix and sew them back up and watch them get well? That's impossible - unless you know how.

I still think probably the only thing I'm suited for is being a boy from Texas.

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.

I think any thinking person should be worried about climate change.

It's no mean calling to bring fun into the afternoons of large numbers of people. That, too, is part of my job, and I'm happy to serve when called on.

I want to make movies about my country from my point of view.