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James Earl Jones Profile
James Earl Jones is an American actor. He has been defined as “one of America’s most prominent and universal” actors for his performances in film, television, and theater, and “one of the most incredible actors in American history”.
James Earl Jones Age
Jones is 92 years old as of 2023. He was born on 17th January 1931 in Arkabutla, Mississippi, United States of America. Furthermore, he celebrates his birthday on 17th January every year.
James Earl Jones Height
He stands at a height of 5 feet 2 inches tall.
James Earl Jones Family
Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, to Ruth (1911–1986), a teacher and maid, and Robert Earl Jones (1910–2006), a boxer, butler, and chauffeur. His father left the family shortly after James Earl’s birth and later became a stage and screen actor in New York and Hollywood. Jones and his father did not get to know each other until the 1950s when they reconciled. He has said in interviews that his parents were both of mixed Irish, and Native American ancestry.
From the age of five, Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents, John Henry, and Maggie Connolly, on their farm in Jackson, Michigan; they had moved from Mississippi in the Great Migration. Jones found the transition to living with his grandparents in Michigan traumatic and developed a stutter so severe that he refused to speak. “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.” He credits his English teacher, Donald Crouch, who discovered he had a gift for writing poetry, with helping him end his silence. Crouch urged him to challenge his reluctance to speak by reading poetry aloud to the class
James Earl Jones Education
Jones was educated at the Browning School for boys in his high school years and graduated in 1949 as vice president of his class from Dickson Rural Agricultural School (now Brethren High School) in Brethren, Michigan. He attended the University of Michigan, where he was initially a pre-med major. He joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and excelled.
Jones 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 his studies, Jones discovered he was not cut out to be a doctor. Instead, he focused on the drama at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance 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 graduated from the university in 1955.
James Earl Jones Stutters
He was born with a childhood stutter, Jones has said that poetry and acting helped him overcome the disability. A pre-med major in college, he served in the United States Army during the Korean War before pursuing a career in acting. Since his Broadway debut in 1957, he has performed in several Shakespeare plays including Othello, Hamlet, Coriolanus, and King Lear.
Jones made his film debut in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 film Dr. Strangelove. Jones worked steadily in theater winning his first Tony Award in 1968 for his role in The Great White Hope, which he reprised in the 1970 film adaptation earning him Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. He received his second Golden Globe Award nomination for his leading role opposite Diahann Carroll in the 1974 romantic comedy-drama film Claudine. Jones gained international fame for providing the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, beginning with the original 1977 film.
James Earl Jones Wife
In 1968, Jones married actress and singer Julienne Marie, whom he met while performing as Othello in 1964. They had no children and divorced in 1972. In 1982, he married actress Cecilia Hart, with whom he had one child, a son Flynn (born in 1982). Hart died from ovarian cancer on October 16, 2016.
James Earl Jones Health Challenge and Religion
In April 2016, Jones spoke publicly for the first time in nearly 20 years about his long-term health challenge with type 2 diabetes. He was diagnosed in the mid-1990s after his doctor noticed he had fallen asleep while exercising at a gym. Jones is Catholic, having converted during his time in the military
James Earl Jones Early roles
Jones started his acting career at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, Michigan. In 1953, he was a stage carpenter. During the 1955–57 seasons, he was an actor and stage manager. He performed his first portrayal of Shakespeare’s Othello in this theater in 1955. His early career also included an appearance in the ABC radio anthology series Theatre-Five.
In 1957, he made his Broadway debut as an understudy to Lloyd Richards in the short-lived play The Egghead by Molly Kazan. The play ran only 21 performances, nevertheless, three months later, Jones created the featured role of Edward the Butler in Dore Schary’s Sunrise at Campobello at the Cort Theatre in January 1958.
During the early to mid-1960s, Jones acted in various works of William Shakespeare, becoming one of the best-known Shakespearean actors of the time. He tackled roles such as Othello and King Lear, Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Abhorson in Measure for Measure, and Claudius in Hamlet. In 1973, Jones played Hickey on Broadway at the Circle in the Square Theater in a revival of Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh. Jones played Lennie on Broadway in the 1974 Brooks Atkinson Theatre production of the adaptation of John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, with Kevin Conway as George and Pamela Blair as Curley’s Wife.
James Earl Jones Career
That same year he starred in the title role of William Shakespeare’s King Lear opposite Paul Sorvino, René Auberjonois, and Raul Julia at the New York City Shakespeare Festival in Central Park. In 1987, Jones starred in August Wilson’s play Fences as Troy Maxson, a middle-aged working-class father who struggles to provide for his family. The play, set in the 1950s, is part of Wilson’s ten-part “Pittsburgh Cycle”.
The play explores the evolving experience and examines race relations, among other themes. Jones won widespread critical acclaim, earning himself his second Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. Jones appeared in several more successful films during the early-to-mid 1990s, including.
The Hunt for Red October (1990), Patriot Games (1992), The Sandlot (1993), Clear and Present Danger (1994), and Cry, the Beloved Country (1995). He also lent his distinctive bass voice to the role of Mufasa in the 1994 Disney animated film The Lion King.
During the 2000s Jones made appearances on various television shows such as CBS’s Two and a Half Men, the WB drama Everwood, Fox’s medical drama House, M.D., and CBS’s The Big Bang Theory. In October 2010, Jones returned to the Broadway stage in Alfred Uhry’s Driving Miss Daisy, along with Vanessa Redgrave at the Golden Theatre.
Jones reprised the role of King Jaffe Joffer in Coming 2 America (2021), the sequel to Coming to America (1988). In 2022, his voice was used via Respeecher software for Darth Vader in the Disney+ miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi. During production, Jones signed a deal with Lucasfilm authorizing archival recordings of his voice to be used in the future to artificially generate the voice of Darth Vader. In September 2022, Jones announced that he would retire from the role of voicing Darth Vader with future voice roles for Vader being created with AI voice software using archived audio of Jones.
James Earl Jones Military service
With the war intensifying in Korea, Jones expected to be deployed as soon as he received his commission as a second lieutenant. As he waited for his orders, he worked as a part-time stage crew hand at the Ramsdell Theatre in Manistee, Michigan, where he had earlier performed. Jones was commissioned in mid-1953, after the Korean War’s end, and reported to Fort Benning to attend the Infantry Officers Basic Course. He attended Ranger School and received his Ranger Tab.
Jones was assigned to Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 38th Regimental Combat Team. He was initially to report to Fort Leonard Wood, but his unit was instead sent to establish a cold-weather training command at the former Camp Hale near Leadville, Colorado. His battalion became a training unit in the rugged terrain of the Rocky Mountains. Jones was promoted to first lieutenant before his discharge. He moved to New York, where he studied at the American Theatre Wing. He worked as a janitor to support himself
James Earl Jones Awards
Jones won his second Tony Award in 1987 for his role in August Wilson’s Fences. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Jones appeared in several other successful films, including Conan the Barbarian (1982), Matewan (1987), Coming to America (1988), Field of Dreams (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), The Sandlot (1993), and The Lion King (1994). During the 21st century, Jones has continued working in the theater, starring alongside Phylicia Rashad in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 2008, and Angela Lansbury in Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (2012) on Broadway and an Australian tour of Driving Miss Daisy (2013).
He also appeared in You Can’t Take It With You (2014) with Annaleigh Ashford and in The Gin Game (2015–16) alongside Cicely Tyson. Jones has reprised his roles in recent Star Wars media, The Lion King (2019) and Coming 2 America (2021). Over his career, Jones has won three Tony Awards (out of five nominations), two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Grammy Award.
He was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 1985. Jones was presented with the National Medal of the Arts by President George H. W. Bush in 1992. He received the Kennedy Center Honor in 2002. Jones was invited by President Barack Obama to perform Shakespeare at the White House Evening for Poetry in 2009.
That same year he also received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. He received an Honorary Academy Award on November 12, 2011. Jones received an Honorary Doctor of Arts degree from Harvard University on May 25, 2017. He was honored with a Special Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2017. On September 12, 2022, the Cort Theatre, a Broadway theater in Manhattan, New York City, was renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre in his honor.
James Earl Jones Movies and TV shows
Lamp Unto My Feet (1 episode) — Vegetable Soup (57 episodes) 2022 Obi-Wan Kenobi (4 episodes) as Darth Vader (voice) 2021 On Broadway as Self (archive footage) 2021 Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street as Self (archive footage) 2021 Coming to 2 America as King Jaffe Joffer 2019 Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker as Darth Vader (voice) 2019 The Movies That Made Us (1 episode) as Self (Archival Footage) 2019 Raúl Juliá:
The World’s a Stage as Self 2019 The Lion King as Mufasa (voice) 2019 The Space: Theatre of Survival as Narrator 2018 Warning Shot as Pendleton 2017 The Lion Guard: Life In The Pride Lands as Mufasa 2016 Rogue One: A Star Wars Story as Darth Vader (voice) 2016 God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater as Kilgore Trout 2015 The Lion Guard: Return of the Roar as Mufasa (voice) 2015 Driving Miss Daisy as Hoke Colburn 2015 Star Wars Rebels: The Siege of Lothal as Darth Vader (voice) 2015 August Wilson: The Ground on Which I Stand 2014 Star Wars Rebels
James Earl Jones Movies and TV shows
(1 episode) as Anakin Skywalker (voice) (1 episode) as Darth Vader (voice) 2014 Star Wars Rebels: Spark of Rebellion as Darth Vader (voice) 2014 The Angriest Man in Brooklyn as Ruben 2013 Gimme Shelter as Frank McCarthy 2013 Muse of Fire as Himself 2013 Blackfish as Self (archive footage) 2013 Milius as Self 2012 Quantum Quest: A Cassini Space Odyssey as Admiral (voice) 2012 An Amazing Time:
A Conversation About End of the Road as Self 2012 Joe Papp in Five Acts 2009 Jack and the Beanstalk as The Giant (voice) 2009 Waking Sleeping Beauty as Self (archive footage) 2008 Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins as Papa Jenkins 2007 The Big Bang Theory (1 episode) as Self 2007 Earth as Narrator 2007 Our Paul: Remembering Paul Robeson as Self 2007 John, Paul, George, and Ben as Narrator 2006 Searching for Orson as Self 2006 The One Show (1 episode) as Self-Guest 2006 Click as Narrator of Michael’s Past (uncredited) 2006.
The Best of The Tony Awards: The Plays as Jack Jefferson (segment “The Great White Hope”) / Troy Maxson (segment “Fences”) 2006 Scary Movie 4 as Narrator (uncredited) 2006 The Benchwarmers as Darth Vader (voice) 2005 Hollywood’s Greatest Villains as Self-Interviewee 2005 The Reading Room 2005 Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith as Darth Vader (voice – uncredited) 2005 The Sandlot 2 as Mr. Mertle 2005 Robots as Voice Box at Hardware Store (voice) 2005 By Any Means Necessary:
The Making of Malcolm X as Narrator 2004 House (1 episode) as Dibala 2004 No Fighting in the War Room Or: Dr. Strangelove and the Nuclear Threat as Self 2004 Nine Dog Christmas as Narrator 2004 Empire of Dreams: The Story of the Star Wars Trilogy as Self 2004 The Story of Star Wars as Darth Vader (archive footage) 2004 Black Indians: An American Story as Narrator 2003 Two and a Half Men (1 episode) as Himself 2003 The Great Year as Narrator 2003 Beneath the Surface: The Making of ‘The Hunt for Red October’ as Self 2002 Everwood (3 episodes) as Will Cleveland 2002
James Earl Jones Net Worth
Jones has an estimated annual net worth of $ 50 million to $ 100 million earned from his career as an Actor.
James Earl Jones Social Media Platforms
Jones is very active on his Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook pages. He has 51.5k followers on Twitter, 1.9k followers on Instagram, and 1.1k followers on Facebook.
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