Tommy Lee Jones sues Paramount

Tommy Lee Jones (pictured), the actor who was the former US vice president Al Gore's roommate when they were at Harvard together in the late 1960s, has begun a $10m lawsuit against Paramount Pictures following a dispute over his fee for his performance in the Oscar-winning movie No Country for Old Men.

The 61-year-old actor filed the lawsuit against Paramount last week, accusing them of failing to pay him promised bonuses based on the film's performance at the box office. Media reports say the court papers claim that Jones took a reduced fee prior to filming in exchange for "significant box office bonuses" and "back-end compensation". It is the vagueness of these terms in the contract that has returned to haunt the actor, best known for playing alongside Will Smith in the Men in Black movies.

The central plank of his argument is that Paramount invited him to sign the contract while fully aware of the flaws it contained. The writ claims that Paramount and its subsidiary fraudulently withheld more than $10m from Jones and demands that an independent auditor be appointed to assess fair compensation.

Jones played the role of Sheriff Ed Tom Bell in Joel and Ethan Coen's adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel. The film won four Academy Awards, including best picture. ·