Yesterday the actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke in Star Wars, honored the birthday of James Earl Jones, who played the voice of Darth Vader. After the famous line “Luke, I’m your father” from The Empire Strikes Back, Mark says congratulations to his dad’s 89th birthday on Instagram.
Jones also has other notorious work: he played Mufasa’s voice in Lion King (1994) and King Jaffe Joffer in A Prince in New York (1988). His most famous performance, however, is Darth Vader’s voice in the Star Wars sequence.
The recent movie Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker (2019), received more than $1 billion USD on the first 28 days in theaters all around the world. It was produced by Disney and, in 2019, was 7th of their movies to receive this amount of money.
Here are a three fun facts about James!
#1: His name doesn’t show on the first two Star Wars productions
James only decided to put his name in the final credits of the third movie, Episode VI: Return of Jedi. Before, he thought he wasn’t a super celebrity enough to have his name in there. But his voice gave Darth Vader a personality and life, so he accepted after some time.
#2: George Lucas’s choice for Darth Vader‘s voice
For the part, George Lucas was thinking about Orson Welles or James to play the villain’s voice. At the American Theatre Wing Gala in 2015, Lucas declared “I knew the voice had to be very, very special.” It happened that this iconic voice was James’s.
#3: Sesame Street participation
That’s right, he participated in 1978, a year after first Star Wars movie come out. But it was really short and only voiced only the letters of the alphabet.
Related: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Is Force-Deficient, But Action-Packed
