James Earl Jones played many iconic roles in his career, but the actor who passed away earlier this week will be known to many movie fans simply for his voice. James Earl Jones is probably most famous as the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise, and while the role would go on to define him, Jones admits that at the time they had no idea things would get nearly that big.
Speaking with Conan O’Brien back in 1995, James Earl Jones said that his contribution to the original Star Wars only required about two and a half hours of work out of him. While he was only recording the voice, that’s still a pretty small commitment for such a major role. It may help to explain why Jones didn't meet some of his Star Wars co-stars for decades. However, Jones implies it was all because they simply didn’t realize what would happen. His voice work for The Empire Strikes Back took significantly longer. The actor explained…
We spent about two and a half hours to do Darth Vader. We didn’t know what we had. The second episode we spent a whole day trying to figure out what we did right.
The success of the original Star Wars was far from a guarantee, and the success the movie had, becoming the highest-grossing movie of all time, was certainly unexpected. Clearly, everything, including the voice of Darth Vader, had been the right call. Unfortunately, as Jones says, nobody really knew what it was they did the first time around that worked so well.
Jones said that ultimately it was the simplicity of the voice that worked. It was about not putting too much emotion in the voice, as that made the character feel more human, and the idea that Darth Vader was more machine than man was what made the character so scary.
While James Earl Jones has many great roles beyond Darth Vader, the villain is Jones’ most famous performance. Although it wasn’t his most profitable, at least at first. Speaking with AFI years ago Jones revealed that he only made $7,000 for the first movie, though, for two and a half hours of work, that’s not a bad average. Jones said…
I lucked out. From all these so called handicaps, I lucked out to get it. A job that paid me $7,000 and I thought that was good movie
James Earl Jones reportedly agreed before his death to let Lucasfilm use AI to recreate his Darth Vader voice in upcoming Star Wars projects, so we likely haven’t heard the last of the iconic bass. Although exactly when and where Darth Vader may appear again is a question. Still, the man will be missed by all those fans he’s been scaring for decades.
