Biografia

According to Jones, when George Lucas was trying to cast the voice of Darth Vader, his immediate idea was to cast Orson Welles. However, he felt that Welles was too well-known for the role. So instead, he looked for an actor with a deep voice, "like Orson Welles", which is how he got the role.

He used to use "Darth Vader" as his handle on his CB radio but stopped when it was frightening people.

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.

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).

Took acting lessons to control his stutter.

[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.