Tommy Lee Jones on Daughter Victoria Jones’ Death

In fact, his bond with Victoria was one of the inspirations behind The Homesman, a Western exploring sexism in the 1800s that he wrote, directed and starred in.

“My grandmother, my mother, my wife, and my daughter are all women,” Tommy Lee, who married Dawn Laurel-Jones in 2001, told costar Meryl Streep in a 2014 Interview magazine conversation. “A lot of my dear friends, yourself included, are women. I am just interested in how they feel, and what’s wrong. And if you want to know what’s wrong today, looking at what was wrong yesterday is a pretty good place to start.”

“There’s an undeniable tradition of sexism in this country that ties into the move westward by people of European descent, and different ways of looking at Manifest Destiny on the west side of the Mississippi River,” he continued. “So those struggles and what made them a struggle is of interest to me.”