Tommy Lee Jones Warns Against Acting

Tommy Lee Jones '69 brought his brand of caustic Southern humor back to Harvard Friday afternoon, advising a group of theatrically-inclined students to avoid at all costs becoming actors.

Speaking at the American Repertory Theater on Brattle Street, Jones, who roomed with Vice President Al Gore '69, said he might not pick the performing arts had he the chance to change careers.

"If you have anything else you can do other than acting, do it," he said repeatedly throughout the hour-long question and answer session, emphasizing that acting didn't have the security and stability of other professions.

If he were a student today, he said, he would choose to attend Harvard Business School upon graduation from College.

"I spend a ton of money on lawyers and agents," he said.

Throughout the afternoon talk, Jones characterized his profession as more of a business than an art form.

"It's called show business, not show art," he said.

Jones told the audience his favorite performance was "the one that appeared in the movie that made the most money. You'd just have to go back and check the numbers."

At one point, a student said he was offended by the portrayal of Arabs and Arab-Americans in Rules of Engagement, in which Jones stars as a grizzled Marine lawyer defending an old friend on charges he ignored orders and murdered citizens.

Jones said he sympathized with the student but said his own celebrity status didn't translate into any special obligation for political conscience.

"Does it make sense for a motion picture actor to stand in front of a television audience and decline to accept an award because whales are being murdered?" he asked rhetorically.

Jones, who was an English concentrator and a resident of Dunster House, said he acted in about 20 shows during his undergraduate years.

"My education in the theatre was entirely practical, and most of it happened right here in this building, and in the Agassiz," he said.

Jones also played football. He was an offensive guard in the famous 29-29 Harvard-Yale game of 1968.

In Friday's talk, after some prodding by the audience, Jones agreed to talk about his experience rooming with Gore.

Jones recounted that "shortly before [Gore] invented the Internet," the two of them purchased their first touch-tone phone.

One day, when Gore was bored with his thesis, Jones found him sitting at his desk, dressed in coveralls, teaching himself how to play "Dixie" on the touch-tone phone.

"I took it away from him, because I had to pay half the phone bill, and I didn't know where he might have been calling," Jones said.