Rise to Fame
For eight years in school, he didn't speak. A stutter that started around age five made talking too painful to attempt, so he went essentially mute. A high school teacher changed that by having him read his own poetry aloud. Memorized words bypassed the block. He spent the rest of high school reading Shakespeare until his voice became an instrument. The Great White Hope in 1968 was the proof of concept: he won a Tony for Best Actor, the first Black man to do it, and earned an Oscar nomination for the film. All of that from a kid who once couldn't say hello.
In the Spotlight
He reportedly earned $7,000 for voicing Darth Vader in A New Hope, asked to go uncredited in the first two films because he considered himself a special effect, and built one of the most recognizable voices in cinema history regardless. The EGOT arrived in 2011 when an Honorary Oscar completed the set. Broadway's Cort Theatre took his name in 2022. That same year, he signed a deal allowing Lucasfilm to synthesize his Vader voice from archival recordings, arranging his own posthumous legacy two years before he died.
Side Notes
His father, Robert Earl Jones, was also an actor who abandoned the family before James was born. The son spent decades as the definitive screen voice for fathers, playing Mufasa, the mystical presence in Field of Dreams, and King Jaffe Joffer in Coming to America. He also voiced CNN's broadcast sign-on for years. His 1993 memoir, Voices and Silences, describes approaching language 'standing on my head, turning words inside out' because the years of muteness forced him to treat words as puzzles rather than tools.
Final Chapter
The day the news broke, Mark Hamill posted '#RIP dad' on X. Mufasa: The Lion King, released in December 2024, opens with a memorial tribute using archival audio of his 1994 Mufasa performance. George Lucas called him 'an incredible actor, a most unique voice both in art and spirit.' CNN, where his voice had served as the network's tagline for decades, called him a voice that had uniquely conveyed through speech instant authority, grace, and decorum.