James Earl Jones

James Earl Jones (born January 17, 1931) is an American actor whose career spans more than seven decades. He has been described as "one of America's most distinguished and versatile" actors for his performances in film, theater, and television, and "one of the greatest actors in American history". Jones has been said to possess "one of the best-known voices in show business, a stirring basso profondo that has lent gravel and gravitas" to his projects, including live-action acting, voice acting, and commercial voice-overs. Jones has a stutter which was more pronounced in his youth. In his episode of Biography, he said it was helped by poetry and acting. 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 worked steadily in theater and won 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 as well. He won his second Tony Award in 1987 for his role in August Wilson's Fences. During the 21st century, Jones has continued working in the theater. He starred alongside Angela Lansbury in Gore Vidal's The Best Man (2012) and in 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 made his screen debut in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove. He also starred with Diahann Carroll in the 1974 romantic comedy-drama film Claudine, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination. Jones provided the voice of Darth Vader in the 1977 space opera film Star Wars and its sequels The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Jones appeared in a number of 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). More recently, he has reprised his voice role of Darth Vader in the Star Wars films Revenge of the Sith (2005), Rogue One (2016), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), and has also been featured in the remake of 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 the Theatre in 2017.

Early life and education

Jones's father, Robert Earl Jones, in promotional still for the Langston Hughes play Don't You Want to Be Free? (1938)

James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on January 17, 1931, to Ruth (née Williams); (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 African-American, Irish and Native American ancestry.

From the age of five, Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents, John Henry and Maggie Williams, 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."[16] 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 through reading poetry aloud to the class.

Jones was educated at the Browning School for boys in his high school years and graduated 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. 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 focused on 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.