Rare Details About James Earl Jones’ Private Life
You know James Earl Jones as the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, and as the voice of Mufasa in The Lion King. But there’s so much more to him than that amazing articulation we all know and love. You may have never learned these facts about Jones’ life and rise to fame, but they’re absolutely worth knowing!
1. He isn’t in the credits for his first Star Wars movies
Despite being an integral part of the films, James Earl Jones isn’t actually in the credits of either A New Hope or The Empire Strikes Back. He actually asked that his name be left off, since he felt he hadn’t done enough work to deserve a credit. He is, though, credited on all the other Star Wars films he was in!
2. He was the first black actor to play POTUS
Jones played a black senator who becomes president in 1972’s The Man, thought to be the first movie that entertained the idea. Jones isn’t sure about it as a film, though. He told the Los Angeles Times newspaper in 2009, “It was done as a TV special. Had we known it was to be released as a motion picture, we would have asked for more time and more production money. I regret that.”
3. He has a son who stays out of the spotlight
Jones has one son, Flynn. But you probably don’t recognize his name, because he maintains a quiet life away from Hollywood. Reportedly he works as his dad’s assistant, and he also followed in the family business in a more low-key way… he’s a voice artist who’s recorded several audiobooks.
4. He doesn’t read reviews of his work
Jones doesn’t care about what movie or theater critics think of his performances. He told the website Healthline in 2016, “I don’t read reviews, so I don’t do any assessment on the value of the work. I just love the work, and that’s always been enough for me.”
5. He didn’t believe Darth Vader was really Luke’s father
It’s arguably the most famous movie twist of all time, but Jones didn’t actually believe it at first. When he learned that Darth Vader was Luke’s father — he’s the one who had to say the line after all — he was convinced that the villain was lying. Of course, later movies proved that he very much wasn’t.
6. He considers himself a “redneck”
Jones grew up in the South, and he proudly accepts the label of “redneck.” When promoting his all-black version of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof to British newspaper The Guardian in 2009 he observed, “I am a redneck, too. I am a Mississippi farm person. I can be foul-mouthed, I can be inarticulate. It’s just that my neck doesn’t get red.”
7. He loves doing commercials
You’ve probably heard Jones in several adverts, and he’s always happy to do them. He told The Guardian in 2009, “I love doing commercials! Usually, they have enough money that they can take time and photograph it well. I’d like to film a British commercial; they’re better than American ones.”
8. He had a difficult relationship with his father
Jones’ father was Robert Earl Jones, himself an actor. But he moved to New York to seek stardom before James was born, and the younger Earl Jones always felt abandoned by him. Father and son did end up bonding once Jones Jr. became an actor as well, but the relationship was always hard to navigate.
9. Both his wives played Desdemona to his Othello
Jones has been married twice. His first wife was Julienne Marie, who played Desdemona opposite his Othello on stage. They divorced in 1972 — a much better outcome than what played out between Othello and Desdemona, of course — and then ten years on, Jones married Cecilia Hart, who also played Desdemona. Sadly, she passed away in 2016.
10. He’s very proud of Field of Dreams
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter magazine in 2011 Jones named Field of Dreams as one of his “most beloved movies.” He said that his wife had encouraged him to do it, and remarked, “I start crying as soon as the music starts… because it’s not about baseball — it’s about fathers and sons, and opportunities missed.”
11. He was the only Lion King star to be in both the original and the remake
Can you imagine anyone else providing the voice of Mufasa? The Walt Disney company couldn’t either. When they remade the original movie again with CGI in 2019, the cast list had new actors for all the beloved animal characters… apart from James Earl Jones. No-one could possibly have replaced him.
12. He has diabetes
Jones was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in the ’90s, but he didn’t speak about it openly until 2016. That year he told the website Healthline, “I’ve been working steadily for 60 or 70 years now and haven’t had time to commit myself to talking more about it publicly. But suddenly I’ve had more time to do it and this is something I really wanted to do.”
13. He was only the second black man ever nominated for Best Actor
Jones was nominated for an Oscar for his performance in 1970’s The Great White Hope, and this made him only the second black man ever to achieve this feat, the first being the legendary Sidney Poitier. Jones’ nomination didn’t turn into a win that year, but come 2012 he was given an honorary Oscar for his distinguished career.
14. His father encouraged him to act
Despite his strained relationship with his father, Jones followed to the letter his parent’s advice about being an actor. As he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2011, “He said, ‘If you want to do this business, you gotta do it because you love it, not because it’s gonna make you rich or famous.’ That was the best advice he could give me.” When he considered giving up acting in the early days, his father continued to encourage him.
15. His film debut was in a Kubrick picture
Jones’ first movie role was in a film that went on to be very highly regarded indeed. It was Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 satire Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. He played a B-52 bombardier with the fabulous name of Lt. Lothar Zogg.
16. He nearly lost the role of Vader to Orson Welles
James Earl Jones wasn’t the first choice for Darth Vader — the iconic and world-famous Orson Welles was. Eventually, Star Wars creator George Lucas had to decide between Welles and Jones for Vader’s voice, and Jones obviously won. Lucas later said that it had been an easy choice to make in the end.
17. He started acting to try and fix his stutter
Jones had a serious stutter as a child… and without it, he might never have become an actor at all. Kids at his school laughed at him whenever he tried to speak, so Jones turned to public speaking and then acting to correct it. Now, you wouldn’t know he’d ever had one.
18. He thought he was getting pranked when told about his Oscar
When Jones was told he was getting an honorary Oscar, he didn’t believe it at all. Field of Dreams director Phil Alden Robinson called to tell him, but Jones was convinced it was a joke until the penny dropped. He told The Hollywood Reporter in 2011 that he and his family “haven’t stopped laughing since — laughing with joy.”
19. He served in the Army
Jones served in the military after graduating from college, and apparently he was very good at it. He loved the physical challenge, and he very much considered making life in the army his career… but when it came down to it, he still wanted more than anything to act.
20. He doesn’t think he has the scariest Vader voice
Jones claimed once in an interview that it wasn’t him who had the best Vader voice, but rather The Empire Strikes Back director Irvin Kershner. He told the American Film Institute in 2009, “Kershner gave me a soundtrack with him doing the voice of Darth Vader... it was scary as hell. Kershner was scarier than I could ever be.”
21. His stutter came from a traumatic event
Jones spoke to the Toronto Star newspaper about his stutter in 2013 and explained how he got it. When he was 12 years old his uncle had a seizure, and he was sent to get help. But when he found a shop with a phone, “All I could do was stutter. My uncle’s life was in my hands and I couldn’t speak. That was the beginning.” It was a lot to overcome.
22. He worked on the first Star Wars for less than three hours
Believe it or not, it took almost no time at all for Jones to do his Vader lines in the original Star Wars. He remembered to The Hollywood Reporter in 2011, “[ Lucas] just wanted to coach me through some of the attitudes he wanted me to have vocally… So I went to work, and we did it in two-and-a-half hours.”
23. He talked to animals as a child
Jones’ stutter prevented him from talking to most people, but he could talk to animals. He remembered to the Daily Mail newspaper in 2010, “I did communicate with the animals quite freely. They don’t care how you sound, they just want to hear your voice.” No wonder he did such a good job of playing a lion!
24. George Lucas felt bad about casting Jones as Vader
In a 2005 interview with Rolling Stone magazine, Lucas said he was hesitant about casting Jones, because he was “a superb actor” and all he had to do was “minimalist acting in a mask.” He mused, “It’s one of these horrible acting exercises — sometimes directors put themselves in a corner, and it’s thankless for the actor.”
25. He once drastically misinterpreted a mugging
Jones wrote in his 1993 autobiography Voices and Silences about an incident that happened when he was 14. While in St. Louis he was cornered by four men who demanded money… so he not only gave them what he had, he went to his mother’s apartment to get them some more. He wrote, “The fact that I went home and got more change suggests that I did not fully understand that I was being mugged.”
26. He was always very close to his grandfather
With his father not around, the young Jones grew very close to his grandfather. He told the Daily Mail in 2011 that as he grew older, “I came to realize what a cherished grandchild I was; John Henry Connolly, my Irish grandfather, was a wonderful father figure who taught me to listen.”
27. He used his Darth Vader voice to scare truckers
Jones appeared on The Dick Cavett Show in 1995 and he had a funny story to tell. Asked if he used his Vader voice in public, he said, “I was driving across the country with a CB radio and I used ‘Darth Vader’ as my handle. It freaked a lot of people out. When I got to the truck stop, there was a buzz about it. So, I decided not to do that anymore.”
28. He kept goats in New York
Since he grew up on a farm, Jones was always very interested in rearing animals. He told the Daily Mail in 2011, “I raise goats in rural New York among the mountains. They have a temper and love to challenge everything, so they are not impressed by award-winning actors — they butt my butt. That’s good, because taking yourself too seriously can be a hazard of my profession.”
29. He put a lot of work into getting his role in The Great White Hope
Jones really wanted the part of Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope, so he started pushing himself. He trained relentlessly to build up his muscles, watched as many of the boxer’s old fights as he could, and shaved his head. Of course, it all paid off in the end.
30. He didn’t earn much money for Star Wars
Jones earned a mere $7,000 for voicing Darth Vader, one of the most iconic characters in all cinema. The esteemed actor thought it was good money at the time and seems to have no regrets, but if he’d instead opted for a share of the movie’s future profits he would have made millions!
31. Fans worried about him during 2019
The remake of The Lion King came out in 2019 but fans noticed that not only was Jones not at the world premiere, he wasn’t at the cast shoots either. Since he was an elderly man by this point, fans started to worry about his health, and the Twittersphere was alight with questions until entertainment websites reassured everyone he was fine.
32. He thinks you never stop learning how to act
In 2014 Jones was asked by the website Broadway World what advice he had for young actors. He said, “You can try to learn how to act, but it’s a long process. I’m still learning, and I’m 83 years old.” He added, “It’s like combat. There’s no combat or military action that’s predictable or that you are going to be able to second-guess.”
33. A good teacher helped him overcome his stutter
Jones credits his English teacher, a man called Professor Donald Crouch, with improving both his stutter and his life in general. The two of them bonded over poetry and Crouch was able to get his young student to read aloud in class, a huge deal for him. Jones has also said Crouch was one of the people who influenced him to become an actor.
34. He had some uncomfortable experiences on the Dr. Strangelove set
Jones didn’t have a good time on his first ever movie. In a 2004 Wall Street Journal article, he remembered that Kubrick was “a control freak of the highest order” and his co-star George C. Scott would “goad” him into uncomfortable conversations about the Vietnam War. If that wasn’t enough, he ended up being “stripped of the lines that made the role attractive to me in the first place.”
35. He never expected Star Wars to become as big as it did
When Star Wars first opened in theaters, no one could have imagined it would grow into an era-defining mega-franchise pulling in billions — and that included Jones. In 2010 he told Star Wars Insider magazine, “I did not expect Star Wars to become such a phenomenon and nor did Lucas.”
36. He once lost part of a toe onstage
Stage work used to be so much more dangerous! Jones recalled to Newsweek magazine in 2012 a serious incident that happened while playing Ajax in Troilus and Cressida. Another actor accidentally slammed a pole into his foot, and a piece of his toe “skidded across the stage.” Jones remembered, “The audience thought it was wonderful — they had never seen an actor turn purple before.”
37. A statement from two soldiers deeply moved him
One of Jones’ greatest life achievements involved his famous CNN voiceover. He told the Toronto Star in 2013, “You know the proudest moment of my career? Two air force pilots told me that when they landed after fighting in the Gulf War, the first thing they heard was my voice on CNN and knew they were safe.”
38. He wants to keep acting for as long as he can
Don’t worry about Jones retiring anytime soon. When celebrating his 90th birthday in 2021 he told newspaper USA Today, “I feel young at heart, and I love to work and will continue to act for as long as I can.” He added that he would “spend the day reflecting on past years and thinking about what’s next.”
39. He doesn’t mind being only known for Darth Vader
Some actors grow frustrated if they’re only remembered for one character, but not Jones. He told the Broadway Buzz website in 2010, “I’ve done a King Lear too! Do the kids know that? No, they have the Darth Vader poster to sign. But it’s okay. When you appear before an audience, you learn to accept whatever they give you.”
40. He studied medicine at university
Like many people, Jones tried out different paths before figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. He studied medicine at the University of Michigan, and joked to the website Healthline in 2016 that his family believed “you shouldn’t waste time and money on college unless you were going to be a doctor, lawyer, or engineer.” So if things had worked out differently, he might have been Dr. Jones!
