James Earl Jones’ passing at age 93 has been heartbreaking news for cinema lovers this week. While the multi-talent’s cause of death hasn’t yet been released, fans are grateful to have experienced his charisma in roles like Darth Vader and Mufasa. Since most of his popular projects were voice acting, not everyone easily recognized Jones’ face, allowing him some anonymity as a celebrity. However, his powerful speech was less easy to masquerade – but it wasn’t always this way. When he was just a young boy, the entertainer developed a stutter as a result of being abandoned by his parents and sent to live with a racist grandmother. Jones almost exclusively communicated through writing, but a high school teacher helped the late star find his purpose in life.
“Just discovering the joy of communicating set it up for me, I think,” The Lion King star told The New York Times. In his teen years, Jones was pushed to write original poetry and recite it to the class; this eventually led him to compete in orating contests and join his school’s debate team. “In a very personal way, once I found out I could communicate verbally again, it became a very important thing for me, like making up for lost time, making up for the years that I didn’t speak,” Jones reflected. His skills landed the young man a scholarship to the University of Michigan where he studied pre-med until changing his major to drama, which he moved to New York to pursue after briefly serving in the Army.
James Earl Jones’ Net Worth Reflects His Epic Career
While his childhood relationship with his father wasn’t great, James Earl Jones was able to repair their bond as they performed together after his graduation. The aspiring actor’s breakout role came in 1969’s The Great White Hope; he won his first Tony for the stage show and later an Academy Award nomination for the 1970 film adaptation. In the following decades, Jones went on to lend his time to many theater productions, plus film and TV opportunities that came his way. While chatting with The Guardian, the Mississippi native once explained his approach to staying booked and busy. “Denzel Washington, Sidney Poitier, Robert Redford, Tom Cruise. Those guys have well-planned careers. I’m just on a journey. Wherever I run across a job, I say, ‘OK, I’ll do that,’” he shared.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, Jones was valued at an estimated $40 million at the time of his death. Shockingly, he made just $7,000 for voicing the villain in Star Wars: Episode 4 – A New Hope. On top of the low pay, Jones even passed up on an actual credit for the film so that David Prowse, who played the physical Darth Vader, could shine. The 93-year-old’s retirement from playing the evil figure came in September 2022, although he reportedly permitted young filmmakers, Lucasfilm and Disney to use archival recordings of his voice for future projects. As per Vanity Fair, it’s unclear how much he made from this deal.
What Is James Earl Jones’ Ethnicity?
James Earl Jones made his ethnicity abundantly clear in his “Voices and Silences” autobiography. “Being myself is very complex, even as a racial entity,” the creative expressed. “I am not only African, but I am Cherokee and Choctaw through my maternal grandmother. I am Irish through my maternal grandfather. Contrary to the view of racialists, Black and White, a mixed blood Black person is not only Black.”
When his father left to find work as a boxer and actor in his childhood, and his mother remarried, Jones was sent to live with his grandparents on a farm in Michigan. They weren’t supportive of his dreams of becoming an actor, and his experience with his grandmother Maggie Connolly clearly left him with some trauma to navigate. In his book, the Tony Award winner described her as “the most racist person [he had] ever known.”
James Earl Jones’ Wife Tragically Died in 2016
In over nine decades of life, Jones was lucky enough to find love twice. His first marriage, to actress Julienne Marie, was short-lived; they met in 1964 while co-starring in Othello and were wed by 1968 but divorced four years later. Before this, Marie was married to writer Gerard Kean, and afterward she moved on to John Scanlon. Jones’ ex continued to work in entertainment, securing roles in Ryan’s Hope and Our Private World.
In 1982, Cecilia Hart found her future husband, who wrote lovingly about her in “Voices and Silences.” Jones praised his other half, “She made me laugh. She was stimulating. And she did not seem to take me seriously at all, which meant I could relax and be myself with her.” The couple met on the set of a TV series called Paris, where he played Detective Captain “Woody” Paris and she was Sergeant Stacey Erickson. It wasn’t their only collaborative effort, as they both appeared in a production of Othello the same year they were married.
The Jones’ settled down in Dutchess County, New York for a relatively quiet life together. Sadly, it was cut short in 2016 when Hart died of ovarian cancer at age 68. Her widower spoke fondly about her at the 2017 Tony Awards, sharing, “I want to thank my wife Ceci for being such a wonderful companion in my life and my work. And for being the great co-producer of our son Flynn and being so dazzling on the red carpet.”
Did James Earl Jones Have Kids?
According to James Earl Jones, his only son, Flynn, was conceived on his wedding night. This means the 42-year-old technically made his stage debut before birth, as Hart was carrying him during the 1982 Othello run. He’s done some voice acting work of his own, narrating books like “Heartthrob,” “Frozen Earth,” “Revenge” and “New Worlds” for Audible. While he’s not overly active on social media, Flynn is happily married to Lorena Monagas since 2019. She has an MFA from The Academy for Classical Acting at the Shakespeare Theatre and George Washington University plus a BFA in graphic design from the Fashion Institue of Technology.
