James Earl Jones (born January 17, 1931) is an
American actor of
stage and
screen, well known for his deep
basso voice. To modern audiences, he is
best known for providing the voice of
Darth
Vader in the
Star Wars
franchise and
Mufasa in
The Lion King.
Early life
Childhood
James Earl
Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi
, the son of Ruth (née Connolly), a teacher and maid,
and Robert Earl Jones (1910-2006),
an actor, boxer, butler, and chauffeur who
left the family shortly after James Earl's birth. Jones and
his father reconciled many years later in the 1980s and 1990s.
Jones was raised by his
maternal grandparents,
farmers
Maggie and John Henry Connolly, and is of
African,
Irish,
Choctaw and
Cherokee
descent.
He moved
to his maternal grandparents' farm in Jackson, Michigan
at the age of five, but the adoption was traumatic
and he developed a stutter so severe he
refused to speak aloud. When he moved to Brethren,
Michigan
in later years a teacher at the Brethren schools
started to help him with his stutter. He remained
functionally
mute for eight years
until he reached
high school. He credits
his high school teacher, Donald Crouch, who discovered he had a
gift for writing
poetry, with helping him out
of his silence. The teacher believed forced
public speaking would help him gain
confidence and insisted he recite a poem in class each day. "I was
a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my
first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to
high school."
Education
After
being educated at the Browning School for boys in his high school
years and graduating from Brethren High School in Brethren, MI, Jones attended
the University of
Michigan
where he was a
pre-med. He joined the
Reserve Officer Training
Corps, and excelled. He felt comfortable within the structure
of the military environment, and enjoyed the camaraderie of his
fellow cadets in the
Pershing Rifles
Drill Team and
Scabbard and Blade
Honor Society. During the course of his studies, Jones discovered
he was not cut out to be a doctor. Instead he refocused himself on
drama, with the thought of doing something he enjoyed, before, he
assumed, he would have to go off to fight in the
Korean War. After four years of college, Jones
left without his degree.
Military
With the war intensifying in Korea, Jones supposed he would be
shipped off to the war as soon as he received his officer's
commission. Instead, he went home. As he waited for his orders to
active duty, he found a part-time stage crew job at the Manistee
Summer Theater, where he had performed before.
By the end of summer
1953, Jones received his second
lieutenant's commission, his official orders, and was off to
Fort
Benning
to attend Basic Infantry Officers School.
While there, Jones went through
Ranger
School, graduated, and received his
Ranger Tab (although he stated during an
interview on the BBC's
The One
Show screened on 11 November 2009 that he "washed out" of
Ranger training).
His first duty station was supposed to be at
Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri
, but his
orders changed, and his unit was instead sent to Colorado
where the
Army planned to establish a cold
weather training command at the old Camp
Hale near Leadville,
Colorado
. His regiment was established as a training
unit, to train in the bitter cold weather and the rugged terrain of
the
Rocky Mountains. Jones
eventually earned the rank of First Lieutenant.
Film and stage career
Early career
Jones had
his acting career beginnings at the Ramsdell Theatre
in Manistee, Michigan
. In 1953 he was a stage carpenter. During
the 1955 – 1957 seasons he was an actor and stage manager. He
performed his first portrayal of
Shakespeare’s
Othello in
this theater in 1955.
His first film role was as a young and trim Lt. Lothar Zogg, the
B-52 bombardier in
Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the
Bomb in 1964, which was more famous for the work of
Peter Sellers and
Slim Pickens.
His first big role came with his portrayal
of boxer Jack Jefferson in the film version of the Broadway
play The Great
White Hope, which was based on the life of boxer Jack Johnson. For his role,
Jones was nominated
Best Actor by the
Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, making him the second
African-American male performer (following
Sidney Poitier) to receive a
nomination.
In 1969, Jones participated in making test films for a proposed
children's television series called
Sesame Street; these shorts, combined
with animated segments, were shown to groups of children to gauge
the effectiveness of the then-groundbreaking
Sesame Street
format. As cited by production notes included in the
DVD release
Sesame Street: Old School
1969-1974, the short that had the greatest impact with
test audiences was one showing bald-headed Jones counting slowly to
ten. This and other segments featuring Jones were eventually aired
as part of the
Sesame Street series itself when it debuted
later in 1969 and Jones is often cited as the first celebrity guest
on that series, although a segment with
Carol Burnett was the first to actually be
broadcast.
In the early 1970s, James appeared with
Diahann Carroll in a film called
Claudine, the story of a woman who
raises her six children alone after two failed marriages and one
"almost" marriage. Ruppert, played by Jones, is a garbage man who
has deep problems of his own. The couple somehow overcomes each
other's pride and stubbornness and gets married.
Darth Vader
He has appeared in many roles since, but is best known as the
sinister
voice of
Darth Vader in the original
Star Wars trilogy. Darth Vader was portrayed
in costume by
David Prowse in the
original trilogy, with Jones
dubbing Vader's dialogue in
postproduction due to Prowse's strong
West Country accent being unsuitable
for the role. At his own request, he was originally uncredited for
the release of the first two films (he would later be credited for
the two in the 1997 re-release):
Although uncredited, Jones' voice is briefly heard as Darth Vader
at the conclusion of
Star Wars Episode
III: Revenge of the Sith. When specifically asked whether
he had supplied the voice, possibly from a previous recording,
Jones told
New York
Newsday:
"You'd have to ask Lucas about that. I don't
know."
Over the years, Jones reprised his role as the voice of Vader
several times: He is credited in the movie
Robots with the voice of Darth Vader from
a voice module. Playing the king of Zamunda in the comedy
Coming to America, he
echoed four Darth-Vader phrases. He also vocally appeared as Vader
in the comedy film
The
Benchwarmers and the video games Monopoly Star Wars and
Star Wars:
The Interactive Video Board Game. Jones' voice is also used for
the Jedi Training academy attraction at Disneyland MGM.
Other voiceover work
His other voice roles include
Mufasa in the
1994 film Disney animated blockbuster
The Lion King, and its
sequel,
The Lion
King II: Simba's Pride. Archived audio from the former has
been used in the
Square Enix and
Disney crossover game
Kingdom Hearts II. He also voiced the
Emperor of the Night in
Pinocchio and the Emperor
of the Night. He also has done the
CNN
tagline, "This is CNN"; the opening for
NBC's
coverage of the 2000 and 2004
Summer
Olympics; "the Big PI in the Sky" (God) in the
computer gameUnder a Killing Moon; a
Claymation film about
The Creation; and several
guest spots on
The Simpsons.
He also voice-plays
Black Manta in
Superman/Batman:
Public Enemies.
Notable film roles
Jones played the older version of author
Alex
Haley, in the television mini-series
Roots: The Next
Generations; the villain
Thulsa Doom, in
Conan the Barbarian; the
character Terence Mann, in the baseball film
Field of Dreams; the feared neighbour
and owner of the dog Hercules in
The
Sandlot; King Jaffe Joffer, in
Coming to America; Reverend Stephen
Kumalo, in
Cry,
The Beloved Country; and Admiral James Greer, in
The Hunt for Red
October,
Patriot
Games, and
Clear and Present
Danger. He also made a cameo appearance in a penultimate
episodes of
Lois &
Clark: The New Adventures of Superman.
Notable stage roles
Jones is an accomplished stage actor as well; he has won
Tony awards in 1969 for
The Great White Hope and in 1987
for
Fences.
Othello,
King
Lear, Oberon in
A
Midsummer Night's Dream, Abhorson in
Measure for Measure, and Claudius
in
Hamlet are
Shakespearean roles he has played. He received
Kennedy Center Honors in
2002.
In February 2008, he began starring on Broadway as Big Daddy in a
limited-run, all-
African-American
production of
Tennessee
Williams's
Pulitzer Prize-winning
drama Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by
Debbie Allen and mounted at the
Broadhurst Theatre.
In November 2009, James will reprise the role of Big Daddy in Cat
On A Hot Tin Roof at the Novello Theatre in London's West End. This
production also stars Sanaa Lathan as Maggie, Phylicia Rashad as
Big Mamma, and Adrian Lester as Brick.
Other work
His other works include his portrayal of
GDI's commanding general
James
Solomon in
Command & Conquer:
Tiberian Sun, a starring role in the
television program Under One
Roof as widowed police officer Neb Langston for which he
received an
Emmy nomination, and television and radio advertising
for Verizon Business
DSL and
Verizon Online DSL from
Verizon
Communications.
Jones appeared in the 1963-1964 television season in an episode of
ABC's drama series
about
college life,
Channing starring
Jason Evers and
Henry Jones. He appeared on the soap
opera
Guiding Light. He
portrayed Thad Green on
Mathnet, a
parody of
Dragnet.
He has played lead characters on television in three series. First,
he appeared on the short-lived
CBS police drama
Paris, which aired
during Fall 1979. That show was notable as the first program on
which
Steven Bochco served as
executive producer. The second show aired on
ABC between 1990 and 1992, the
first season being titled
Gabriel's
Fire and the second (after a format revision)
Pros and
Cons.In both formats of that show, Jones played a former
policeman wrongly convicted for murder who, upon his release from
prison, became a private eye. In 1995, Jones starred in
Under One
Roof, as Neb Langston, a widowed African-American police
officer sharing his home in Seattle with his daughter, his married
son and children and Neb's newly adopted son. The show was a
mid-season replacement and lasted only six weeks.
In 1986, Jones played a Harvard law professor in the movie
Soul Man, with
C. Thomas
Howell and
Rae Dawn Chong. From
1989 to 1993, Jones served as the host of the children's TV series
Long Ago and Far
Away.
In 1990, Jones did a voiceover for the Simpsons episode "Treehouse
of Horror", in which he was the narrator for the Simpsons' version
of
Edgar Allan Poe's poem "
The Raven".
In 1992, Jones was often seen as the host on
the video tele-monitor for the Sea World resort in Orlando,
Florida
. In 1996, James guest starred in the
CBS drama Touched by an Angel as the Angels
of Angels in the episode "
Clipped
Wings". In 1998, Jones starred in the widely acclaimed
syndicated program
An American
Moment (created by
James R.
Kirk and Ninth Wave Productions).
Jones took over the role left by Charles Kuralt, upon Kuralt's
death. He has guest-starred on such sitcoms as
NBC's
Frasier and
Will & Grace, and
the WB drama
Everwood. Jones also lent his voice for a
narrative part in the
Adam Sandler
comedy,
Click, released in
June 2006. His voice is also used to create an audio version of the
King James New Testament.
On April 7, 2005, James Earl Jones and
Leslie Uggams headed the cast in an
African-American Broadway revival version of
On Golden Pond, directed by
Leonard Foglia and produced by Jeffrey Finn.
On December 15, 2008, Jones made a guest appearance on the sitcom
Two and a Half
Men.
On October 5, 2009, Jones made a guest appearance on the television
series
House playing
African dictator Antipas Dibala.
Personal life
Jones has been married to actress
Cecilia
Hart since 1982. They have one child, Flynn Earl Jones.
He was
previously married to American
actress/singer Julienne
Marie (born March 21, 1933, Toledo, Ohio
); they had no children.
Coincidentally, both of Jones' wives had played
Desdemona to Jones'
Othello.
Jones was
given a key to the city in Detroit,
Michigan
.
Awards
Academy Awards
Emmy Awards
Golden Globe
Awards
Independent Spirit
Awards
Screen Actors Guild
Awards
Tony Awards
Other Awards
Filmography
Footnotes
- Ensian (Yearbook of the University of Michigan), p. 156
(1952)
- Ramsdell Theatre History
- http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/4690148.stm
References
Jones, James Earl, and Penelope Niven.
James Earl Jones: Voices
and Silences (
Charles
Scribner's Sons, New York, 1993) ISBN 0-684-19513-5
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