Jeffrey Jones

Jeffrey Duncan Jones, born September 28, 1946, in Buffalo, New York, is an American actor whose career has spanned stage, film, and television across more than five decades. The son of Ruth (née Schooley) and Douglas Bennett Jones, he lost his father in infancy and was raised by his mother, an art historian who encouraged him to pursue acting. After completing his secondary education at The Putney School in 1964, Jones enrolled at Lawrence University as a premed student, where his work in university productions drew the attention of director Tyrone Guthrie, who recruited him for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Jones built an extensive stage career encompassing more than 125 productions, beginning at the Guthrie Theater before expanding to engagements in South America, Canada, and London. His New York work included Off-Broadway productions such as Cloud 9 and Henry V. On Broadway, Jones appeared in five productions between 1975 and 1979: Trelawny of the "Wells," The Crucifer of Blood, Boy Meets Girl, Secret Service, and The Elephant Man. His transition from stage to film began in 1970, and his work in the Lucille Lortel Theatre production of Cloud 9 brought him to the attention of the casting team for Easy Money (1983), which gave him a supporting role opposite Rodney Dangerfield. That same production attracted director Miloš Forman, who cast Jones as Emperor Joseph II in Amadeus (1984), an adaptation of Peter Shaffer's play. Critic James Berardinelli described Jones's portrayal as that of a superficial and self-absorbed ruler unable to distinguish great opera from mediocre work, and Vincent Canby of The New York Times singled out the performance for praise. The role earned Jones a nomination for the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture.

Jones went on to appear in a succession of prominent film roles. As Edward R. Rooney, the obsessive dean of students in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), he became widely recognized, though he expressed concern that the role might overshadow his work in Amadeus. That same year he played Dr. Walter Jenning in the George Lucas production Howard the Duck and portrayed Mister Acme in the satirical television miniseries Fresno, starring Carol Burnett, Charles Grodin, and Dabney Coleman. In Beetlejuice (1988), directed by Tim Burton, Jones played Charles Deetz alongside Catherine O'Hara, the two portraying a married couple who become unwitting co-owners of a haunted house. He also appeared as Inspector Lestrade in Without a Clue (1988) and as Dr. Skip Tyler in The Hunt for Red October (1990), in which his character identifies the Red October's propulsion system to Alec Baldwin's Jack Ryan. Jones continued his collaboration with Burton in Ed Wood (1994), portraying The Amazing Criswell, and in Sleepy Hollow (1999). Additional film credits include the role of Thomas Putnam in The Crucible (1996), Uncle Crenshaw Little in Stuart Little (1999), Eddie Barzoon in The Devil's Advocate (1997), and lumber mogul Joe Potter in Dr. Dolittle 2 (2001).

On television, one of Jones's earliest roles was in an episode of the CBS series Sara in 1976. He starred in the short-lived CBS sitcom The People Next Door (1989), playing a cartoonist whose imagination could bring things to life. For Disney, he hosted the 1987 D-TV Monster Hits musical special as the Magic Mirror and later appeared in the video storyline component of the Walt Disney World attraction Extraterrestrial Alien Encounter, which ran from 1995 to 2003. Guest appearances across his television career include Amazing Stories, Tales from the Crypt, and Batman: The Animated Series. His most sustained television role came with the HBO drama series Deadwood (2004–2006), in which he played newspaper publisher A. W. Merrick. Keith Uhlich of Slant Magazine described both Jones and the character as perversely appropriate additions to the series and identified Merrick as its secular soul. Jones reprised the role in Deadwood: The Movie (2019). As part of the Deadwood ensemble, he received a nomination for the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

In 2002, Jones was charged with soliciting a minor to pose for nude photographs, offenses that had occurred in 1999 and 2000. In July 2003, he pleaded no contest, and prosecutors dropped accompanying charges for possession of child pornography. He was sentenced to five years of probation and required to register as a sex offender for life. He was subsequently arrested twice more, in 2004 and 2010, for failing to update his sex offender registration.