Tommy Lee Jones still wants to work at 80. Asked whether he’d considered retirement, the actor answered: “Yes, I have. I’m not gonna do it.”
His role opposite Ethan Hawke in The Lowdown helps explain why. In season 2 of the FX series, Jones plays the estranged father of Hawke’s character.
It’s his first television series role since the 1989 miniseries Lonesome Dove. Jones called the project “very inviting” and described the set as “a happy place to be.”
“I would have been happy to play any part in that world. What was most appealing was just what it was,” Jones said.
The father-son relationship gives both actors a history of affection and hurt to work through. Hawke described their characters’ past: “Some of it is rich with love and good things, and a lot of it is toxic and difficult.”
For Jones, that complicated relationship is part of the appeal: “It’s also under extraordinary original circumstances in which we discover universal experience, and I think that’s what drama is all about.”
