James Earl Jones Net Worth

James Earl Jones's Quotes

• [from "James Earl Jones: Voices and Silences" page 360]: My voice is for hire. My endorsement is not for hire. I will do a voice-over, but I cannot endorse without making a different kind of commitment. My politics are very personal and subjective.
• If you take a villain like Thulsa Doom or Darth Vader and have fun with it, that destroys the credibility of the character.
• When I read that part in the script where it said, "Luke, I am your father", I thought, "He's lying. I have to see how they carry this lie out.".
• [on the Iraq war]: All people have to be prepared. If we are going to be the police, we also have to be the guardians. We can no longer play games. I was not against the war in Bosnia. I was against it taking so long. I was not against the war in Somalia. Again, it took too long, and we didn't finish the job. We should've stayed and finished the job. About this pending war, I just think we should've finished that war the first time.
• [on the terrible stutter he suffered from as a young man]: One of the hardest things in life is having words in your heart that you can't utter.

Interesting Facts about James Earl Jones

1. Born at 6:05 am.
2. Took acting lessons to control his stutter.
3. Son, with Cecilia Hart: Flynn Earl Jones.
4. Had a stuttering problem as a child and spoke very little; still struggles with the problem and says he has to think about what he says carefully before saying it (impressive, since he is known widely for his voice).
5. Provided the thunderous voice (uncredited) of Darth Vader, the villain of the original Star Wars trilogy.
6. Son of prizefighter-turned-actor Robert Earl Jones, from whom he was (allegedly) estranged long into adulthood. Yet they starred together in a well-received stage revival of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men", as Lennie Small and Crooks, respectively (Kevin Conway also starred in the play, as George Milton).
7. He's the commanding voice that says "This is CNN".
8. Attended and graduated from the University of Michigan in 1955.
9. His first time acting was at the Ramsdell Theater in Manistee, Michigan.
10. Attended and graduated from Kaleva-Norman-Dickson High School in Brethren.
11. Grew up in the small town of Dublin, Michigan.
12. Callers using Bell Atlantic pay phones often hear Jones's voice assuring them "Welcome to Bell Atlantic", just before a female voice asks for a calling card number.
13. Served in the United States Army as a Lieutenant during the Korean War after graduating from college.
14. His "death" was announced during a live broadcast of an NBA playoff game in April 1998. The deceased was actually James Earl Ray, the convicted assassin of Martin Luther King.
15. He received the Kennedy Center Honor in December 2002.
16. Narrated the documentary Black Indians: An American Story (2001) , which explores issues of racial identity between the mixed-descent peoples of both Native American and African American heritage. Jones himself is a Black Indian.
17. Announced the forty-fifth greatest movie villain of all time by Maxim Magazine's "Fifty Greatest Movie Villains of All Time" list for his character of Darth Vader in Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977).
18. Co-starred with Madge Sinclair five times.
19. Has won two Tony Awards: in 1969, as Best Actor (Dramatic), for "The Great White Hope", a role he recreated in an Oscar-nominated performance in the film version of the same title, Einde van de laatste ronde (1970) and in 1987, as Best Actor (Play), for August Wilson's "Fences".
20. In the original Star Wars trilogy, he and Billy Dee Williams were the only black actors to play major roles. One of Billy Dee Williams' other roles was the title role in Scott Joplin (1977). Scott Joplin's ragtime music was used as the score for The Sting (1973), which features James's father, Robert Earl Jones.