Quotes from Tommy Lee Jones

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.

It's no fun to be a struggling young actor. It's a desperate thing, no way to be happy. If you have any alternative, you should take it.

I don't direct movies for a living.

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.

I fear other actors who are not prepared. And I fear directors who are afraid.

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.

I have worked on very good movies that have been buried, and I've worked on some resounding mediocrities that have been paraded through the marketplace like they were masterpieces.

If you want to know about my politics, the only way to do that is to look at my work.

My home town is very small and very remote and we don't have a movie house.

All my life I've had the privilege to make my living with my imagination, and the most important thing has been to see my creative life grow. I was educated to do that and have lived accordingly.

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.

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

I don't think I would describe my sense of humor. Doesn't sound like the kind of thing I'd do.

I've made some bad movies. And I really enjoyed it!

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.

Cormac McCarthy's language is perfect. He is in my view the greatest living American prose stylist.

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.

I've made some bad movies. And I really enjoyed it!

I don't play just villains. I like to have parts that are not simply villains.

I fear other actors who are not prepared. And I fear directors who are afraid.