Tommy Lee Jones (born September 15, 1946) is an Oscar-winning American actor and director.

Jones was born in San Saba, Texas to Clyde C. Jones, who worked in the oil fields of both Texas and Libya, and Lucille Marie Scott, who was a police officer and hairdresser who owned a beauty parlour; the two were married and divorced twice. Jones, an eighth-generation Texan, has a Cherokee Native American grandparent, and is mostly of Welsh ancestry. Jones was also a resident of Midland Texas.

Jones graduated the St. Mark's School of Texas and attended Harvard on a scholarship, where he was a roommate of former Vice President Al Gore and of John Lithgow at Dunster House. Jones played offensive tackle on Harvard's undefeated 1968 varsity football team, was nominated as a first-team All-Ivy League selection, and played in the memorable and literal last-minute Harvard sixteen-point comeback blitz to tie Yale in the 1968 Game. Jones graduated cum laude with a degree in English in 1969.

Jones has two children from his second marriage to Kimberlea Cloughey: Victoria Kafka (born 1991) and Austin Leonard (born 1982). On March 19, 2001, he married his third wife, Dawn Laurel.