CANNES, May 21: Tommy Lee Jones, the tough-talking Texan who won the best acting award at this year’s Cannes film festival on Saturday, racked up more than three decades as an actor before embarking on his film directing debut. The 58-year-old is best known for his blunt roles as a federal marshall in “The Fugitive” opposite Harrison Ford and as a law enforcer for aliens in “Men in Black” with Will Smith.

The aura of achievement that has illuminated his performing career, and before that his studies at Harvard University, has carried on to his new move behind the camera. The best acting prize, and another for best screenplay, that his first-ever movie, “The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada”, signalled strong nods from the Cannes jury — though they stopped short of lauding his talents as director.

Jones started out working in underwater construction and on an oil rig, and earned scholarships that got him to Harvard, where he shared a dorm with Al Gore, the former US vice-president under Bill Clinton.

From there, he moved to New York to start a career on stage and in film and television, developing a solid stature in supporting roles in many Hollywood films that eventually led to memorable turns in “JFK” and “Under Siege”.

But his love for Texas, where he still lives, determined the nature of “Three Burials”, which he said he wanted to make to show the unique land that straddles the US-Mexican border.

In “Three Burials”, Jones plays a straight-talking rancher in a modern-day Texas town who befriends an illegal Mexican immigrant and is determined to personally see justice done when the man is killed.

He abducts the border patrol guard responsible and heads over the border on horseback to perform a decent burial. The story does not unfold in a linear way, though, but rather fast-forwards and reverses, telling a little bit more about the characters each time.

For Jones, the journey in making the film and coming to Cannes as the director and star of the movie had parallels with the path already trod by pal Clint Eastwood. But in his down-home fashion, and with his lined face creased in a stern scowl, Jones brooked little comparison between his film and others — especially Westerns.—AFP