Christopher Jones (actor)

William Frank Jones, better known as Christopher Jones (August 1, 1941 – January 31, 2014), was an American stage, movie, and television actor from Jackson, Tennessee.

He was born in Jackson, Tennessee, where his father was a grocery clerk and his mother Robbie was an artist. Jones' father admitted her to the state hospital in Bolivar, Tennessee, in 1945, for holding a gun to his head after he was caught being unfaithful. Jones and his brother were then placed in Boys Town in Memphis, where he became a fan of James Dean after being told he bore a resemblance to him. He then joined the Army, but went AWOL, and after serving a sentence in a military prison, he moved to New York, where he began his acting career. His mother died when he was 19.

Jones (adopting the stage name Christopher) made his Broadway debut on December 17, 1961, in Tennessee Williams's The Night of the Iguana, directed by Frank Corsaro and starring Shelley Winters. Winters introduced Jones to actress Susan Strasberg, the daughter of method acting progenitor Lee Strasberg. Jones later studied at Strasberg's Actors Studio. Despite friction with her father, Jones married Susan in 1965. The couple had a daughter, Jennifer Robin Jones, in 1966, named as a tribute to actress Jennifer Jones.

Moving to Hollywood, Jones was cast in the title role of ABC's television series The Legend of Jesse James (produced by 20th Century Fox), which ran for 34 episodes in the 1965–66 season. When the series ended, he accepted the title role in the 1968 movie Chubasco (1968) with Susan Strasberg playing his character's lover/wife. Their real marriage did not survive the filming, and they divorced in 1968.

Jones' next acting role, as rock star and presidential aspirant Max Frost in the film Wild in the Streets (1968), costarring Shelley Winters, propelled him to the peak of his fame. He appeared later in the same year with Yvette Mimieux in the sex comedy Three in the Attic. Jones also became friends with actress Sharon Tate and her husband Roman Polanski. He later recounted that he had an affair with Tate while she was pregnant with Polanski's child, and that she had a premonition of her death (she was murdered by members of the Manson family).

After two films in Europe with Pia Degermark (The Looking Glass War and Brief Season, both 1969), Jones was cast by director David Lean in Ryan's Daughter (1970). The two men had a difficult relationship, as did many actors who worked with David Lean. This intensified when production of the film took 12 months instead of the expected six because David Lean would wait for the right composition of clouds or the perfect storm to brew. Unknown to Christopher, he was drugged during his filming of Ryan's Daughter by Sarah Miles, according to her first autobiography A Right Royal Bastard, which caused Christopher to believe he was having a breakdown. Jones also was involved in a car crash, not knowing he had been drugged. The director and producers never informed him of the drugging. Later, Lean would dub his voice, causing a bad reputation for Jones (Beyond the Epic: The Life and Films of David Lean). This took a personal toll on Jones, who returned from Ireland to California after filming ended (staying for a time in his manager Rudy Altobelli's guest house, the cottage behind the house where Tate had died), and abandoned his acting career. He engaged in a few long-term relationships, did painting, art deco, and Roman classic sculpting in clay and had a family life, living quietly at the beach with his children.

Jones was offered the part of Zed in Pulp Fiction (1994) by director Quentin Tarantino, but he turned it down. He made a final screen appearance in crime comedy Mad Dog Time (1996) for his friend director/actor Larry Bishop, who appeared in Christopher's first movie Wild in the Streets. In his later years, he had a career as an artist and sculptor. His works included an oil painting of Rudolph Valentino that was displayed at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

He died on January 31, 2014, at the age of 72, due to complications arising from gallbladder cancer. He is survived by seven children, Jennifer Strasberg, Christopher Jones Jr., Jeromy McKenna, Delon Jones, Tauer Jones, Calin Jones, and Seagen Jones.