His head was shaved for his role as American baseball's haunted hero,the mean Ty 'Cobb'. In the biographical film Jones, makes you care for if not like the violent, boozy sporting God. He narrowly missed another Oscar nomination. Before it was 'The Client' the hat trick of film adaptations of best-selling author John Grishman's legal tangles with Susan Sarandon protecting a young witness and Jones supplying the goods as a publicity crazed Federal prosecutor.He was a also a wily Irish bomber matching tactics with Jeff Bridges' Boston bomb squad officer in 'Blown Away.' And in 'Natural Born Killers' as the prison warden he was part of a ensemble cast including Woody Harreslson and Juliette Lewis in Oliver Stone's satire about love and violence and the American media.'Natural Born Killers' was another major as well as controversial landmark in Jones' career. Every director and producer you talk to wants to work with him. He's not very sure:' I've called home and said:"I'm making the best movie I've ever made - possibly the best movie that's ever been made in the history of the media". And then it turns out to be a howling pooch.' He's an eighth generation Texans -- 'I just don't like to get very far from a horse' -- and a remarkably civilised man. He likes Oliver Stone because he gets every literary reference Jones makes. He was a scholarship lad at Harvard ( his father did OK but not wonderful working a driller on the world's oilfields ) and appreciates his learning. This Spring it was his fifteenth wedding anniversary to the former Kimberlea (Kimberlea) Cloughley now known to all around San Saba , Texas , as Mrs Jones. The town 150 miles north of San Antonio is the closest to Jones' 3,000 acre ranch:' Being a cattleman is as creative as acting. Agriculture is an art. Things don't grow automatically. If they did we wouldn't have overgrazed this country and seen all the erosion.' Jones looks and talks tough but when you ask his wife she says:' He has a very rough looking face and maybe a rough demeanour but he's a sweetheart inside.' Well, she can ask him to put down his Budweiser and offer a few words. 'I get bored defending myself against charges of being sullen, morose and belligerent,' says Jones before offering:' And in fact you piss me off.' Ah, Mr Jones is brightening up. He's really quite a funny man. He played American football at University and admits:' It's only beginning to dawn on me that I'm never actually going to play for the Dallas Cowboys.' Instead he is one of America's best polo players with a string of horses and his own fields near the home he shares with his 36-year-old wife and their two children, Austin,12, and four-year-old Victoria. He's a character. Asked the size of his ranch he replies:' Are you asking me how much money is in my bank account? Although I won't offer and statistics I will tell you that I'm not fooling around.' His film work is important but he says:' Over the years it's made me famous and by any standards well-to-do. But I usually don't pay much attention to the glorification.' He prefers simpler things: 'I've talked myself into believing I remember the day that I was born. I hang on to my memories with cat's claws. I can remember tornadoes in Knox County when I was three. We were living in a trailer next to the hospital and near a cotton field. The tornado jumped over our trailer and hit the hospital . I remember seeing X-rays from the hospital floating down over the cotton plants in bloom. 'Some of my memories are clear -- very clear. Both my mother and my father used to go to honkytonk bars to do what everybody in that part of Texas did -- drink. I'd wait for them outside in the car, alone. I remember hearing music and singing coming through the walls of the saloon to me in the car. I remember lying there just waiting, just waiting alone. As an actor he has always been admired but he has waited for the attention he's getting now. Andrew Davis who directed him in 'The Fugitive' is a fan:' You can do nine takes with him and they'll all be different and all be fascinating. He loves actors. He has the veneer of a tough guy , his face and voice are very strong, but he can play a soft, gentle character very well.'
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