Yahoo Finance A rare glimpse into Tommy Lee Jones' private world
"Back, dog!" commanded Tommy Lee Jones when his canine named Johnny Mack Brown dared to rest his head on a reporter's shoulder.
It was as good an introduction as any to the actor's notoriously irascible ways. The Texas Monthly interview never did take off (though it's a terrific read anyway, despite — or maybe because of — its paucity of insight).
Jones' demand for privacy is legendary, so the public takes what it can get. At the moment, that's a rare glimpse into his private world via a Florida polo farm and nature preserve. Click here or on a photo for a slideshow.
Tommy Lee Jones has been trying to sell the property off and on since at least 2011, and now it's available at a big markdown. Though he was asking $26,750,000 a few years ago, the new listing lowers the price tag by nearly $7 million, to $19.9 million. (It was also verrrry briefly listed a few months ago at $22 million, but that was reportedly a mistake.)
The farm occupies 55 acres in Wellington, Florida, a town west of Palm Beach that's been described as "one of the few places you have to brake for horses at every intersection": "Nestled alongside most of the multimillion-dollar equestrian homes and carriage houses near the Palm Beach Polo Equestrian Club are barns and stables — not Mister Ed barns with dirt floors and dark stalls, but rather 'horse mansions' with marble floors, mahogany stalls, ceiling fans, sound systems, and automatic bug spray systems."
We don't know whether Jones' stables qualify as "horse mansions," but the setting does offer a lake with waterfall, a couple hundred "rare plantings" and a 5-acre nature preserve with trails, according to the listing.
The architectural aesthetic is, probably unsurprisingly, stripped down. "I think a minimalist outlook is perfect," he recently told L.A. Confidential magazine. "I appreciate the emotions of geometry."
The 4-bedroom, 2-bath home isn't Jones' primary residence — that's in Texas, where seven generations lived before him — nor is it really the focus of the property. Here, ponies are the stars of the show.
In that Texas Monthly profile, he described summer evenings on his Texas ranch as an idyll: "About seven o’clock at night, we’ll start playing polo. We’ll play until about nine, and then when we’re done, we put the meat on the fire and watch the dark come. It’s a good life. Everyone is happy."
The reporter asked him if he ever let visitors watch, and he answered the same way we imagine he'd answer about his Florida retreat, too.
"Oh, no. The gates are locked. We keep it shut down. Just friends and family, no outsiders. Just how I like it."
Click here or on a photo for a slideshow of Tommy Lee Jones' Florida horse farm — a rare glimpse into his private world, on the market for about $20 million.
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