Tommy Lee Jones

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

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

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

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.

I don't direct movies for a living.

If military movies were automatically successful we'd make nothing but military movies. But seriously, patriotism is one thing that all Americans have in common.

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

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

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.

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.

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.