James Earl Jones - Academy of Achievement

<!doctype html> <html lang="en-US" prefix="og: http://ogp.me/ns#"> <head><script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/bundle-playback.js?v=HxkREWBo" charset="utf-8"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/wombat.js?v=txqj7nKC" charset="utf-8"></script> <script>window.RufflePlayer=window.RufflePlayer||{};window.RufflePlayer.config={"autoplay":"on","unmuteOverlay":"hidden"};</script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/_static/js/ruffle/ruffle.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> __wm.init("https://web.archive.org/web"); __wm.wombat("http://www.achievement.org:80/achiever/james-earl-jones","20180912023845","https://web.archive.org/","web","/_static/", "1536719925"); </script> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/banner-styles.css?v=S1zqJCYt" /> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="/_static/css/iconochive.css?v=3PDvdIFv" />  <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="57x57" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-57x57.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-114x114.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-72x72.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-144x144.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="60x60" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-60x60.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-120x120.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="76x76" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-76x76.png"/> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/apple-touch-icon-152x152.png"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-196x196.png" sizes="196x196"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-96x96.png" sizes="96x96"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-32x32.png" sizes="32x32"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-16x16.png" sizes="16x16"/> <link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/favicon-128.png" sizes="128x128"/> <meta name="application-name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#000000"/> <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-144x144.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square70x70logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-70x70.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square150x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-150x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-wide310x150logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x150.png"/> <meta name="msapplication-square310x310logo" content="http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/favicon/mstile-310x310.png"/> <link href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845cs_/https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Source+Sans+Pro:400,600,400italic,600italic,700,700italic" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <title>James Earl Jones - Academy of Achievement</title>  <meta name="description" content=""I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school." When a five-year-old James Earl Jones moved with his grandparents from rural Mississippi to frosty Michigan, he developed a stutter so severe that he refused to speak aloud, even in school. One day in high school, an understanding teacher, impressed by a poem Jones had written, dared him to recite it in front of the class. When he recited without faltering, teacher and students were amazed by the power of the voice Jones had kept bottled up inside him. Today that voice is one of the best known in the world. Through an arduous program of public speaking, James Earl Jones overcame his handicap, and today he is one of America's most celebrated actors, renowned for what critics have called "the voice of the century." His performance in the play and film The Great White Hope made him a star. He has won multiple Tony, Emmy and Grammy Awards for his stage, television and recording work, and an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in motion pictures. He has been heard by millions as the voice of Mustafa in The Lion King, and Darth Vader in the Star Wars films. This triumphant star is the recipient of the National Medal of Arts — awarded in tribute to his outstanding contributions to the cultural life of the United States — and of the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American theater."/> <link rel="canonical" href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"/> <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US"/> <meta property="og:type" content="article"/> <meta property="og:title" content="James Earl Jones - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">"I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school."</p> <p class="inputText">When a five-year-old James Earl Jones moved with his grandparents from rural Mississippi to frosty Michigan, he developed a stutter so severe that he refused to speak aloud, even in school. One day in high school, an understanding teacher, impressed by a poem Jones had written, dared him to recite it in front of the class. When he recited without faltering, teacher and students were amazed by the power of the voice Jones had kept bottled up inside him. Today that voice is one of the best known in the world.</p> <p class="inputText">Through an arduous program of public speaking, James Earl Jones overcame his handicap, and today he is one of America's most celebrated actors, renowned for what critics have called "the voice of the century." His performance in the play and film <i>The Great White Hope</i> made him a star. He has won multiple Tony, Emmy and Grammy Awards for his stage, television and recording work, and an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in motion pictures. He has been heard by millions as the voice of Mustafa in <i>The Lion King</i>, and Darth Vader in the <i>Star Wars</i> films. This triumphant star is the recipient of the National Medal of Arts — awarded in tribute to his outstanding contributions to the cultural life of the United States — and of the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American theater.</p>"/> <meta property="og:url" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"/> <meta property="og:site_name" content="Academy of Achievement"/> <meta property="og:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/jones-james-earle-3-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <meta property="og:image:width" content="2800"/> <meta property="og:image:height" content="1120"/> <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary"/> <meta name="twitter:description" content="<p class="inputTextFirst">"I was a stutterer. I couldn't talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school."</p> <p class="inputText">When a five-year-old James Earl Jones moved with his grandparents from rural Mississippi to frosty Michigan, he developed a stutter so severe that he refused to speak aloud, even in school. One day in high school, an understanding teacher, impressed by a poem Jones had written, dared him to recite it in front of the class. When he recited without faltering, teacher and students were amazed by the power of the voice Jones had kept bottled up inside him. Today that voice is one of the best known in the world.</p> <p class="inputText">Through an arduous program of public speaking, James Earl Jones overcame his handicap, and today he is one of America's most celebrated actors, renowned for what critics have called "the voice of the century." His performance in the play and film <i>The Great White Hope</i> made him a star. He has won multiple Tony, Emmy and Grammy Awards for his stage, television and recording work, and an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in motion pictures. He has been heard by millions as the voice of Mustafa in <i>The Lion King</i>, and Darth Vader in the <i>Star Wars</i> films. This triumphant star is the recipient of the National Medal of Arts — awarded in tribute to his outstanding contributions to the cultural life of the United States — and of the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American theater.</p>"/> <meta name="twitter:title" content="James Earl Jones - Academy of Achievement"/> <meta name="twitter:image" content="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/jones-james-earle-3-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg"/> <script type="application/ld+json">{"@context":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180912023845\/http:\/\/schema.org","@type":"WebSite","@id":"#website","url":"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20180912023845\/http:\/\/www.achievement.org\/","name":"Academy of Achievement","alternateName":"A museum of living 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/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/jones-james-earle-3-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg [(max-width:992px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/jones-james-earle-3-Feature-Image-2800x1120-1400x560.jpg"></div> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <figcaption class="feature-area__text ratio-container__text container"> <div class="feature-area__text-inner text-white"> <h2 class="serif-8 feature-area__text-subhead back"><a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever">All achievers</a></h2> <h1 class="serif-1 entry-title feature-area__text-headline">James Earl Jones</h1> <h5 class="sans-6 feature-area__blurb">Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement</h5> </div> </figcaption> </div> </div> </figure> </header> </div>  <nav class="in-page-nav row fixedsticky"> <ul class="nav text-xs-center clearfix" role="tablist"> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link active" data-toggle="tab" href="#biography" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Biography">Biography</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#profile" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Profile">Profile</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#interview" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Interview">Interview</a> </li> <li class="nav-item col-xs-3"> <a class="nav-link" data-toggle="tab" href="#gallery" role="tab" data-gtm-category="tab" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever Gallery">Gallery</a> </li> </ul> </nav> <article class="post-2577 achiever type-achiever status-publish has-post-thumbnail hentry careers-actor"> <div class="entry-content container clearfix">  <div class="tab-content"> <div class="tab-pane fade in active" id="biography" role="tabpanel"> <section class="achiever--biography"> <div class="banner clearfix"> <div class="banner--single clearfix"> <div class="col-lg-8 col-lg-offset-2"> <div class="banner__image__container"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <img class="lazyload banner__image" data-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/WhatItTakes_jones-james-earl-256-190x190.jpg" alt=""/> </figure> </a> </div> <div class="banner__text__container"> <h3 class="serif-3 banner__headline"> <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/what-it-takes/id1025864075?mt=2" target="_blank"> Listen to this achiever on <i>What It Takes</i> </a> </h3> <p class="sans-6 banner__text m-b-0"><i>What It Takes</i> is an audio podcast on iTunes produced by the American Academy of Achievement featuring intimate, revealing conversations with influential leaders in the diverse fields of endeavor: music, science and exploration, sports, film, technology, literature, the military and social justice.</p> </div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="row"> <header class="editorial-article__header col-md-8 col-md-offset-2 text-xs-center"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> <h3 class="serif-3 quote-marks">To be a part of good storytelling. The goal was about that. And nothing threw me off, neither poverty nor discouragement. Nothing threw me off.</h3> </header> </div> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar clearfix"> <h2 class="serif-3 p-b-1">The Voice of Triumph</h2> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> January 17, 1931 </dd> </div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_34564" style="width: 362px" class="wp-caption alignright"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-34564 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-010.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-34564 lazyload" alt="James Earl Jones's grandparents, John Henry and Maggie Connolly, on the front porch of their homestead in Mississippi, ca. 1933." width="362" height="450" data-sizes="(max-width: 362px) 100vw, 362px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-010.jpg 362w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-010-306x380.jpg 306w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-010.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1933: James Earl Jones’s grandparents, John Henry and Maggie Connolly, on the front porch of their homestead in Mississippi. Jones has described his grandmother, Maggie, as “the most racist person I have ever known,” which forced him to develop his own independent thinking. His grandmother was of African-American, Cherokee and Choctaw ancestry.</figcaption></figure><p>James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla Township, Mississippi. His parents separated before his birth and he was raised by his grandparents on a farm that had been in the family since Reconstruction. When he was only five, the family moved north to a farm in rural Michigan, and the young boy found the adaptation so traumatic that he developed an incapacitating stutter. For years he refused to speak more than a few words at a time, even to his family. In school he pretended to be mute, and communicated only in writing. He began to express himself by writing poetry. In high school a sympathetic teacher named Donald Crouch saw through Jones’s insecurity. He challenged each student in the class to write a poem. Jones found inspiration in the citrus fruit the federal government had distributed in the area to relieve wartime shortages. When he turned in an “Ode to Grapefruit,” written in the epic meter of Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” the teacher pretended to believe that Jones could not have written the poem himself, and challenged him to prove it by reciting it in front of the class. With his own verses committed to memory, Jones found he could speak without stuttering. Crouch encouraged Jones to compete in high-school debates and oratorical contests. One happy day in his senior year, he won both a public-speaking contest and a scholarship to the University of Michigan.</p> <figure id="attachment_34582" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-34582 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Robert_Earl_Jones_in_Langston_Hughes_Dont_You_Want_to_be_Free-_23_June_1938_photograph_by_Carl_Van_Vechten.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-34582 lazyload" alt="1938: Robert Earl Jones, James Earl Jones's father in Langston Hughes's Don't You Want to Be Free. (Carl Van Vechten)" width="2280" height="2896" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Robert_Earl_Jones_in_Langston_Hughes_Dont_You_Want_to_be_Free-_23_June_1938_photograph_by_Carl_Van_Vechten.jpg 2280w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Robert_Earl_Jones_in_Langston_Hughes_Dont_You_Want_to_be_Free-_23_June_1938_photograph_by_Carl_Van_Vechten-299x380.jpg 299w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Robert_Earl_Jones_in_Langston_Hughes_Dont_You_Want_to_be_Free-_23_June_1938_photograph_by_Carl_Van_Vechten-598x760.jpg 598w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Robert_Earl_Jones_in_Langston_Hughes_Dont_You_Want_to_be_Free-_23_June_1938_photograph_by_Carl_Van_Vechten.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1938: Robert Earl Jones, James Earl Jones’ father in Langston Hughes’s <i>Don’t You Want to Be Free</i>. James Earl Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi in 1931, the son of Robert Earl Jones (1910-2006), an actor, boxer, butler, and chauffeur who left the family after James Earl’s birth, and his wife, Ruth Jones, a teacher and maid. Jones and his father reconciled many years later and Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents. (Carl Van Vechten)</figcaption></figure><p>Jones entered the University of Michigan planning to study medicine, but found himself drawn to the theater. After completing service as an Army Ranger, he set off for New York City to pursue acting studies. It was not an easy choice. He lived in a $19-a-month apartment and scrubbed floors to make ends meet. Serious jobs for black actors were scarce, and Jones had before him the sobering example of his father, Robert Earl Jones, an actor who had been blacklisted for his political activism.</p> <figure id="attachment_34570" style="width: 1672px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-34570 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00198068.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-34570 size-full lazyload" alt="1961: Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones in a scene from the Off-Broadway production of the play The Blacks." width="1672" height="2048" data-sizes="(max-width: 1672px) 100vw, 1672px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00198068.jpg 1672w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00198068-310x380.jpg 310w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00198068-620x760.jpg 620w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00198068.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1961: Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones in a scene from the Off-Broadway production of the play <i>The Blacks</i>.</figcaption></figure><p>After a number of small roles, James Earl Jones attracted the attention of critics and audiences with his intense performance in the American premiere of Jean Genet’s absurdist drama, <em>The Blacks. </em>This historic 1961 production introduced the theater public to a new generation of outstanding African American actors; the cast included Roscoe Lee Brown, Raymond St. Jacques, Cicely Tyson, Godfrey Cambridge and Maya Angelou. Jones earned multiple awards for his performances in <em>Moon on A Rainbow Shawl</em> in 1962, and garnered an Obie as Best Actor in Off-Broadway Theater for his performance in <em>Clandestine on the Morning Line.</em> He received two Obies in 1965 for his work in Bertolt Brecht’s <em>Baal</em> and Shakespeare’s <em>Othello.</em></p> <figure id="attachment_34547" style="width: 1500px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-34547 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gwh_alexander_joneslandscapecrop.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-34547 size-full lazyload" alt="In 1968, James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander starred as husband and wife in Howard Sackler’s searing drama The Great White Hope, a fictionalized account of the life of boxing legend Jack Johnson that ran at the Alvin Theatre. Jones (seen at right) and Alexander were awarded Tony Awards for Best Actor and Best Featured Actress in a Play." width="1500" height="844" data-sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gwh_alexander_joneslandscapecrop.jpg 1500w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gwh_alexander_joneslandscapecrop-380x214.jpg 380w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gwh_alexander_joneslandscapecrop-760x428.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gwh_alexander_joneslandscapecrop.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">In 1968, James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander starred as husband and wife in Howard Sackler’s searing drama <i>The Great White Hope</i>, a fictionalized account of the life of boxing legend Jack Johnson that ran at the Alvin Theatre. Jones (seen at right) and Alexander were awarded Tony Awards for Best Actor and Best Featured Actress in a Play.</figcaption></figure><p>In 1968 Jones earned widespread acclaim for his performance in <em>The Great White Hope</em> playing a character based on Jack Johnson, the first African American heavyweight champion. His performance in the play on Broadway won him his first Tony Award; he received an Oscar nomination for his performance in the 1970 film version.</p> <figure id="attachment_34580" style="width: 800px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-34580 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/main_1-James-Earl-Jones-Signed-Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-8x10-Photo-PSA-COA-PristineAuction.com_.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-34580 size-full lazyload" alt="James Earl Jones is known for his voice roles as Darth Vader in the Star Wars film series and Mufasa in Disney's The Lion King." width="800" height="1000" data-sizes="(max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/main_1-James-Earl-Jones-Signed-Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-8x10-Photo-PSA-COA-PristineAuction.com_.jpg 800w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/main_1-James-Earl-Jones-Signed-Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-8x10-Photo-PSA-COA-PristineAuction.com_-304x380.jpg 304w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/main_1-James-Earl-Jones-Signed-Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-8x10-Photo-PSA-COA-PristineAuction.com_-608x760.jpg 608w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/main_1-James-Earl-Jones-Signed-Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-8x10-Photo-PSA-COA-PristineAuction.com_.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">James Earl Jones is known for his voice roles as Darth Vader in <i>Star Wars</i> and Mufasa in Disney’s <i>The Lion King</i>.</figcaption></figure><p>In the decades since, James Earl Jones has continued to appear in memorable roles on stage, in feature films, and on television. He made his big screen debut in <em>Dr. Strangelove</em> in 1963, and has worked in over 50 films, appearing in everything from <em>Conan the Barbarian</em> to <em>Field of Dreams.</em> He played “Admiral Greer” in the highly popular series of films based on the Tom Clancy novels <em>The Hunt for Red October,</em> <em>Patriot Games,</em> and <em>Clear and Present Danger.</em> One of his favorite roles is that of the South African minister in the classic <em>Cry, The Beloved Country.</em> Younger audiences will recognize his voice as “King Mufasa” in the animated classic <em>The Lion King, </em>and as Darth Vader in the <em>Star Wars</em> films.</p> <figure id="attachment_34542" style="width: 1980px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-34542 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AP_8703270119.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-34542 lazyload" alt="Lena Horne embraces actor James Earl Jones after his opening night performance, on March 27, 1987, in the Broadway play Fences at the 46th street Theatre in New York. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)" width="1980" height="3020" data-sizes="(max-width: 1980px) 100vw, 1980px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AP_8703270119.jpg 1980w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AP_8703270119-249x380.jpg 249w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AP_8703270119-498x760.jpg 498w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AP_8703270119.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">March 27, 1987: Award-winning singer and actress Lena Horne embraces actor James Earl Jones after his opening night performance in the Broadway play <i>Fences</i> at the 46th street Theatre in New York. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)</figcaption></figure><p>James Earl Jones has appeared on television regularly since the early 1960s. One of his most memorable appearances was as the writer Alex Haley in <em>Roots II.</em> In 1991, he won an Emmy for Best Actor in a Drama Series for his performance in the title role of <em>Gabriel’s Fire, </em>and as Best Supporting Actor for his role in the television film <em>Heat Wave</em>, making him the first person to win two acting Emmys in the same year. He is also heard by millions around the world every day intoning the words, “This is… CNN.”</p> <figure id="attachment_34569" style="width: 2053px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-34569 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-je-getty-50308111.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-34569 size-full lazyload" alt="1991: James Earl Jones holding his awards in Press Room at Primetime Emmy Awards." width="2053" height="3083" data-sizes="(max-width: 2053px) 100vw, 2053px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-je-getty-50308111.jpg 2053w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-je-getty-50308111-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-je-getty-50308111-506x760.jpg 506w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-je-getty-50308111.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1991: James Earl Jones holding his awards at the Primetime Emmy Awards. Jones received two Emmy Awards: for Outstanding Supporting Actor in <em>Heat Wave</em> and for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for <em>Gabriel’s Fire</em>.</figcaption></figure><p>Throughout his career, he has regularly returned to the live theater, winning acclaim for his performances in <em>Of Mice and Men,</em> in Athol Fugard’s <em>Master Harold and the Boys,</em> and as <em>King Lear</em> for the New York Shakespeare Festival. Over the years he has received numerous honors for his work. He won a second Tony Award for his stunning performance in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama <em>Fences</em> by August Wilson and directed by Lloyd Richards.</p> <figure id="attachment_47225" style="width: 954px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-47225 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-JAMES-EARL-JONES-Screen-Shot-2018-05-30-at-1.23.57-PM1.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-47225 lazyload" alt="" width="954" height="1230" data-sizes="(max-width: 954px) 100vw, 954px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-JAMES-EARL-JONES-Screen-Shot-2018-05-30-at-1.23.57-PM1.jpg 954w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-JAMES-EARL-JONES-Screen-Shot-2018-05-30-at-1.23.57-PM1-295x380.jpg 295w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-JAMES-EARL-JONES-Screen-Shot-2018-05-30-at-1.23.57-PM1-589x760.jpg 589w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/wp-JAMES-EARL-JONES-Screen-Shot-2018-05-30-at-1.23.57-PM1.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1996: Guest of honor James Earl Jones at the American Academy of Achievement Summit in Sun Valley, Idaho.</figcaption></figure><p>In 1992 he received the National Medal of Arts for his services to American culture. The following year, he won critical praise for his autobiography, <em>Voices and Silences.</em> He was honored by his peers with the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Screen Actors Guild in 2009 and received an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2011.</p> <figure id="attachment_39743" style="width: 1636px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-39743 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-04-2002-jamesearljones_princebandar.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-39743 lazyload" alt="" width="1636" height="1176" data-sizes="(max-width: 1636px) 100vw, 1636px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-04-2002-jamesearljones_princebandar.jpg 1636w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-04-2002-jamesearljones_princebandar-380x273.jpg 380w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-04-2002-jamesearljones_princebandar-760x546.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-04-2002-jamesearljones_princebandar.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Awards Council member James Earl Jones and guest of honor Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, at the Banquet of the Golden Plate during the 2002 Summit in Dublin, Ireland.</figcaption></figure> <p>More than 40 years after his breakthrough performance in <em>The Great White Hope</em>, James Earl Jones remains active on both stage and screen. After returning to Broadway in a 2005 revival of the play <em>On Golden Pond</em>, he had leading roles on Broadway or on London’s West End in every season from 2008 to 2015. In 2008 he played Big Daddy in the Tennessee Williams classic <em>Cat on a Hot Tin Roof</em>, a role he reprised on London’s West End the following year. In 2010 and 2011, he enjoyed successful runs in New York and London starring opposite Vanessa Redgrave in an acclaimed revival of <em>Driving Miss Daisy</em>.</p> <figure id="attachment_34579" style="width: 2048px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-34579 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-oscars-2014-african-american-award-nomin-001.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-34579 size-full lazyload" alt="2011: James Earl Jones receives an Honorary Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the third annual Governors Awards." width="2048" height="1531" data-sizes="(max-width: 2048px) 100vw, 2048px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-oscars-2014-african-american-award-nomin-001.jpg 2048w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-oscars-2014-african-american-award-nomin-001-380x284.jpg 380w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-oscars-2014-african-american-award-nomin-001-760x568.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-oscars-2014-african-american-award-nomin-001.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">2011: James Earl Jones receives the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences “Honorary Oscar” for Lifetime Achievement to the motion picture industry for “his legacy of consistent excellence and uncommon versatility.” </figcaption></figure> <p>He played a cunning ex-president in the 2012 Broadway revival of Gore Vidal’s political drama <em>The Best Man</em>. The following year, he reunited with his <em>Driving Miss Daisy</em> co-star Vanessa Redgrave in Shakespeare’s <em>Much Ado About Nothing</em> at the Old Vic in London. On Broadway, he played the cheerfully eccentric grandfather in the classic comedy <em>You Can’t Take It With You</em> in 2014, and starred opposite Cicely Tyson in a revival of the two-character drama <em>The Gin Game</em> in 2015.</p> <figure id="attachment_34553" style="width: 1500px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-34553 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-at-the-2016-tony-awards-5-5689.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-34553 size-full lazyload" alt="James Earl Jones and his wife, Cecilia Hart, at the 2016 Tony Awards. Hart and Jones married in 1982, the same year that he played Othello opposite her Desdemona on Broadway." width="1500" height="2250" data-sizes="(max-width: 1500px) 100vw, 1500px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-at-the-2016-tony-awards-5-5689.jpg 1500w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-at-the-2016-tony-awards-5-5689-253x380.jpg 253w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-at-the-2016-tony-awards-5-5689-507x760.jpg 507w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-at-the-2016-tony-awards-5-5689.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">James Earl Jones and his wife, television and stage actress, Cecilia Hart, at the 2016 Tony Awards. Hart and Jones married in 1982, the same year that he played Othello opposite her Desdemona on Broadway. Cecilia died in 2016.</figcaption></figure><p>James Earl Jones was married to actress Cecilia Hart from 1982 until her death in 2016. They had one child, Flynn Earl Jones. Between roles, James Earl Jones makes his home on a secluded farm in upstate New York. In 2017, James Earl Jones received a Special Tony Award for lifetime achievement in the theater.</p></body></html> <div class="clearfix"> </div> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="profile" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <header class="editorial-article__header"> <figure class="text-xs-center"> <img class="inductee-badge" src="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/themes/aoa/assets/images/inducted-badge@2x.png" alt="Inducted Badge" width="120" height="120"/> <figcaption class="serif-3 text-brand-primary"> Inducted in 1996 </figcaption> </figure> </header> <div class="row"> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <dl class="clearfix m-b-0"> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Career</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> <div><a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/#filter=.actor">Actor</a></div> </dd> </div> <div class="col-xs-12 sidebar--chunk p-b-2"> <dt class="serif-7">Date of Birth</dt> <dd class="sans-2"> January 17, 1931 </dd> </div> </dl> </aside> <article class="col-md-8 editorial-article clearfix"> <p class="inputTextFirst">“I was a stutterer. I couldn’t talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.”</p> <p class="inputText">When a five-year-old James Earl Jones moved with his grandparents from rural Mississippi to frosty Michigan, he developed a stutter so severe that he refused to speak aloud, even in school. One day in high school, an understanding teacher, impressed by a poem Jones had written, dared him to recite it in front of the class. When he recited without faltering, teacher and students were amazed by the power of the voice Jones had kept bottled up inside him. Today that voice is one of the best known in the world.</p> <p class="inputText">Through an arduous program of public speaking, James Earl Jones overcame his handicap, and today he is one of America’s most celebrated actors, renowned for what critics have called “the voice of the century.” His performance in the play and film <i>The Great White Hope</i> made him a star. He has won multiple Tony, Emmy and Grammy Awards for his stage, television and recording work, and an Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in motion pictures. He has been heard by millions as the voice of Mustafa in <i>The Lion King</i>, and Darth Vader in the <i>Star Wars</i> films. This triumphant star is the recipient of the National Medal of Arts — awarded in tribute to his outstanding contributions to the cultural life of the United States — and of the Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in the American theater.</p> </article> </div> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="interview" role="tabpanel"> <section class="clearfix"> <div class="col-md-12 interview-feature-video"> <figure> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/hnze3oquDpI?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_23_50_07.Still011-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_23_50_07.Still011-760x428.jpg"></div> <div class="video-tag sans-4"> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> <div class="video-tag__text">Watch full interview</div> </div> </div> </figure> </div> <header class="col-md-12 text-xs-center m-b-2"> <i class="icon-icon_bio text-brand-primary"></i> </header> <aside class="col-md-4 sidebar"> <h2 class="serif-3 achiever--biography-subtitle">The Voice of Triumph</h2> <div class="sans-2">Sun Valley, Idaho</div> <div class="sans-2">June 29, 1996</div> </aside> <article class="editorial-article col-md-8">   <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>We understand that the move from rural Mississippi to Michigan was traumatic for you as a small boy. Is it true you actually stopped talking for some years?</strong></p> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/-UmikWDYPjg?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_32_41_24.Still014-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_32_41_24.Still014-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>James Earl Jones: It wasn’t that I stopped talking, it’s that I resolved that talking was too difficult. You see, in the move from Mississippi to Michigan, you would think it would be a jubilant journey for a young boy of — I was then five years old — going to the promised land, you know. For me though, it was leaving the soil that I had touched with my bare feet, and I didn’t know if I’d ever touch soil with my bare feet again, and that was traumatic for me. I was leaving a Huck Finn world. Forget social problems, I was leaving the earth of Mississippi, the clay soil along the banks of the Mississippi River. And that was a trauma for me.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_34559" style="width: 689px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-34559 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-005.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-34559 size-full lazyload" alt="James Earl Jones's great-grandparents, Wyatt and Shirley Jeeter Connolly, and family on the family farm, 1908. James Earl Jones's grandfather, John Henry Connolly, is second from right in the back row." width="689" height="450" data-sizes="(max-width: 689px) 100vw, 689px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-005.jpg 689w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-005-380x248.jpg 380w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-005.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1908: James Earl Jones’s great-grandparents, Wyatt and Shirley Jeeter Connolly, and family on the family farm in Arkabutla, Mississippi. James Earl Jones’s grandfather, John Henry Connolly, is second from right in the back row.</figcaption></figure><p>I didn’t realize that until I went back for a family reunion when I was 40 years old. I got back to the old homestead, and I felt such a warmth. Not temperature, not heat warmth, but such a sucking warmth hit me that I was back to that land again. That choo-choo train journey from Mississippi to Michigan was a trauma. There were other things that happened along the way that one might pin it to, family things.</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/qjcSXNn5P-Q?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_29_34_26.Still012-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_29_34_26.Still012-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I was an adopted child of my grandparents, and I don’t know how I can ever express my gratitude for that because my parents would have been a mess. And there were considerations about that, where should I go, and that began to bother me when I’d hear those discussions at night. “Where should James Earl go?” But it was the journey itself that I really feel, the being ripped from the soil is what set me into a state of trauma. So by the time I got to Michigan I was a stutterer. I couldn’t talk. So my first year of school was my first mute year and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_34584" style="width: 898px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-34584 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_n0w9m4tw241qa2j8co1_1280.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-34584 size-full lazyload" alt="James Earl Jones at 30 in 1961. (Carl Van Vechten)" width="898" height="1309" data-sizes="(max-width: 898px) 100vw, 898px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_n0w9m4tw241qa2j8co1_1280.jpg 898w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_n0w9m4tw241qa2j8co1_1280-261x380.jpg 261w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_n0w9m4tw241qa2j8co1_1280-521x760.jpg 521w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_n0w9m4tw241qa2j8co1_1280.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">James Earl Jones at 30 in 1961. Since his Broadway debut in 1957, his career has spanned more than sixty years, and he has been described as “one of America’s most distinguished and versatile” actors. (© Carl Van Vechten)</figcaption></figure><p>I suspect a lot of people are stutterers and somehow overcome it.</p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/6hSHV06Qre8?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_34_15_23.Still016-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_34_15_23.Still016-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/perseverance/">Perseverance</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>I’m still a stutterer. But we all find a way to mask it. And sometimes, I guess, our vocabulary might be a little larger than it would have ordinarily been because we have to find a word we won’t trip on. A word that begins with the right consonant. I resigned to it as a kid. I guess I was then about — from ten years old — when I was approaching serious schoolwork, you had to really report what you knew, and the teacher accepted that I could do all my reporting with a pencil. I didn’t have to speak. Oral examinations? I did all mine written. And I became just a non-verbal person. I became a writer. And I was resigned to that. That was okay. I was kind of quiet. You know, I compare myself now to Ali — Muhammad Ali. Whenever I meet him, he doesn’t say much. I think he enjoys it back there, not saying very much, because he was such a mouther before — and brilliant at it. Now I think he enjoys being quiet. Well I enjoyed being quiet. As long as people respected and didn’t bother me, and didn’t probe me, it was a nice place to be.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_34573" style="width: 2280px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><noscript><img class="wp-image-34573 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00829866.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-34573 size-full lazyload" alt="1968: James Earl Jones, star of the play The Great White Hope talking with boxing champ Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), following his performance." width="2280" height="1573" data-sizes="(max-width: 2280px) 100vw, 2280px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00829866.jpg 2280w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00829866-380x262.jpg 380w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00829866-760x524.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://162.243.3.155/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00829866.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">1968: James Earl Jones, star of the play <i>The Great White Hope,</i> talking with world boxing champion Cassius Clay.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>How did that change? Was there a teacher who helped?</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/ox_jU_U5fNg?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_04_12_00.Still001-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_04_12_00.Still001-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/vision/">Vision</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>James Earl Jones: Donald Crouch in high school said, “Do you like these words?” I was then writing words of my own. He said, “Do you like these words? Do you like the way they sound in your head?” He said, “Well, they sound ten times better when you give ’em out in the air. It’s too bad you can’t say these words.” He began to challenge me, to nudge me toward speaking again, and by using my own poetry — and then other poets because he himself was a compatriot of Robert Frost, he himself was a poet. He himself said he learned a poem a day. In case he went blind, he’d have a whole book of poems in his head. And he nudged me toward that, toward acknowledging and appreciating the beauty of words.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_39665" style="width: 1700px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="wp-image-39665 size-full " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-chicago_1184_JFR.jpg"></noscript><img class="wp-image-39665 size-full lazyload" alt="Awards Council member James Earl Jones presenting the Academy's Golden Plate Award to guest of honor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey, during the 2004 International Achievement Summit in Chicago, Illinois." width="1700" height="1360" data-sizes="(max-width: 1700px) 100vw, 1700px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-chicago_1184_JFR.jpg 1700w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-chicago_1184_JFR-380x304.jpg 380w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-chicago_1184_JFR-760x608.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-chicago_1184_JFR.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Awards Council member James Earl Jones presenting the Academy’s Golden Plate Award to guest of honor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey, during the 2004 International Achievement Summit in Chicago, Illinois.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>What was the poem he finally got you to read aloud?</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/Qc4C4Koe4ck?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_11_44_17.Still005-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_11_44_17.Still005-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>James Earl Jones: It was the poem, “Ode to Grapefruit.” Only because I had written it in the meter — I’d used the meter of the “Hiawatha,” and Donald Crouch used that as a reason to challenge me. He said, “I don’t think you…” he says, “This is a good poem. It’s so good; I don’t think you wrote it. To prove you wrote it, get up in front of the class and say it out loud.” And that was the time. I don’t know whether he concocted that challenge or not, but he really meant it. And I got up and I said it and didn’t stutter. Nice surprise.</p> </div> </div>      <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/REC-html40/loose.dtd"> <html><body><figure id="attachment_19956" style="width: 1536px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-19956 " src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0500.jpg"></noscript><img class="size-full wp-image-19956 lazyload" alt="" width="1536" height="1024" data-sizes="(max-width: 1536px) 100vw, 1536px" data-srcset="/web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0500.jpg 1536w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0500-380x253.jpg 380w, /web/20180912023845im_/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0500-760x507.jpg 760w" data-src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0500.jpg"><figcaption class="wp-caption-text">Composer Stephen Sondheim receives the Academy of Achievement’s Gold Medal from Awards Council member James Earl Jones at the 2005 International Achievement Summit during a Broadway symposium in New York City.</figcaption></figure><p><strong>What came over you at that moment?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: I didn’t know if I was happy or not. I was in shock and awe. I won’t put a pleasure label to it. I was in trouble.</p> <p><strong>Do you still have the poem?</strong></p></body></html> </div>     <div class="achiever__video-block"> <figure class="achiever__interview-video"> <div class="embed-responsive embed-responsive-16by9"> <iframe class="embed-responsive-item embed-responsive--has-thumbnail" width="200" height="150" src="https://web.archive.org/web/20180912023845if_/https://www.youtube.com/embed/tptiWiB6e7w?feature=oembed&autohide=1&hd=1&color=white&modestbranding=1&rel=0&showinfo=0&theme=light" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> <div class="embed-responsive__thumbnail ratio-container__image lazyload" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_32_48_12.Still015-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-1996-MasterEdit.00_32_48_12.Still015-760x428.jpg"></div> <i class="embed-responsive__play icon-icon_play-full text-brand-primary"></i> </div> <figcaption class="achiever__interview-video-terms"> <span>Keys to success —</span> <a class="comma-item" href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/keys-to-success/passion/">Passion</a> </figcaption> </figure>  <div class="achiever__interview-video__copy"> <p>James Earl Jones: When I left the Army — when I left my training in Fort Benning, I bought a little used car that broke down in Akron, Ohio. In that little used car was all my poems, you know. So I put it in storage, and then when I went back to collect it later on after the Army, it was missing. And I’m grateful that the poem about grapefruit was missing, cause — although it was… it had all the poetic values and had all the meter and all that, it was basically — just as Longfellow imitated the Finnish author of <em>Kalevalaa,</em> I imitated Longfellow’s “Hiawatha,” and it had all that. But it was really about the beauty — I don’t know if anybody else can appreciate it. I wouldn’t expect them to. In the wintertime, in the snow country, citrus fruit was so rare, and if you got one, it was better than ambrosia. It was better than a peach. It was better than anything you can imagine from exotic worlds. And I just poured my heart out to the wonders of grapefruit.</p> </div> </div>     <aside class="collapse" id="full-interview">    <div class="achiever__interview-copy"> <p><strong>What was it like growing up in small towns in the rural Mississippi and Michigan in the 1930s and ’40s?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: It was very simple. Blessedly simple. I think the extent to which I have any balance at all, any mental balance, is because of being a farm kid and being raised in those isolated rural areas. Even in Mississippi there was no immediate concern about social problems, you know. We were a feudal system of our own. Grandpa was a feudal lord, and we all did our work, you know. And there were 13 of us in the household. We were self-sufficient. My grandmother though, began to prepare us in her own neurotic — and I think psychotic — way to face racism. So, she taught us to be racist, which is something I had to undo later when I got to Michigan, you know.</p> <p>In Michigan it was even more isolated. Nine months of snow! As much as I yearned to flee that when I was a teenager, now I yearn to get back to that simplicity. My son now appreciates that. He’s 13. He prefers to be in the country.</p> <p><strong>What ideas, values or experiences did you bring with you from the rural South, or from rural Michigan, that helped you in college and in your career?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: There’s one I’ve tried to express before about contentment. I run counter to the Constitution, which allows for the pursuit of happiness. Well, happiness is kind of something giddy. And from my people, the concept of contentment was what you were after, not to keep up with the Joneses, not to be driven. I mean the idea of lying under a palm tree and letting the banana fall in your mouth, there’s nothing wrong with that, you know, and if a wave came up too high, you rolled up the hill, you know. And I’m not saying the virtue of laziness, but the virtue of being easy on yourself. The virtue of finding an ambition that carried with it a lack of anxiety. We were self sufficient as a people, as a farm people. Even during the rationing period, during World War II, we didn’t have the anxiety that we’d starve, because we grew our own potatoes, you know? And our own hogs, and our own cows and stuff, you know. That put you at ease to a great extent. It made you responsible. We children learned responsibility automatically. We worked not because Grandpa said, “work,” we worked because if we didn’t work, the cow’s milk would go bad, the chickens would starve and stop producing eggs, and the pigs would yell a lot.</p> <p><strong>Who most influenced or inspired you?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: More and more, when I single out the person out who inspired me most, I go back to my grandfather. My grandmother had the most dramatic effect on my life because she set me in one direction, and I had to go back the other direction for my sanity, and for my ability to be a social human being. But the more I think about it, the quiet one was the one I think really influenced me, because he taught me the value of being able to listen, not to rush to judgment, being really rational.</p> <p>I’ll give an example. They were religious people. They allowed me to decide for myself, but they were very religious people. Protestants. When we first moved to Michigan…</p> <p>Before my grandpa built his own church, we went to the neighboring town, and it was a white community. You know, up north, mostly middle European people and Indians, Chippewa Indians. We were welcome to that church, but once we got in, they didn’t know what to do with us. They didn’t know what to sing, for instance, so they sang “Ol’ Black Joe.” I mean, it’s kind of a hymn-like song I guess, it’s a Stephen Foster. Now my grandmother was immediately incensed. My grandfather said, “You know, maybe they don’t know what to do with us. Maybe they didn’t mean any harm at all. Consider that.” So it was then when I began to say, “Well maybe my grandmother isn’t always right, and maybe I should not be a rabid racist as she is recommending.” Defensive racist, you know? And maybe I should take each person as an individual.</p> <p><strong>How did you overcome these deeply-held feelings of your grandmother towards white people?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Oh, they were always available to me, but I knew she was usually not right. She was usually wrong, and it was a pleasure to see that borne out. Like being a New Yorker, you always let your paranoia serve you. It’s the same with being a minority in a so-called racist society. Nobody ever fools you, but you don’t assume that somebody’s out to get you when you meet them. I came from a world where if you saw a stranger on the road, you said, “Hi!” You waved, you honked your horn. Strangers were important people, and you didn’t get anywhere by being suspicious of them. That’s the second thing you do, not the first thing you do.</p> <p><strong>Was there anything you read as a kid that influenced or inspired you?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Reading was a big thing, yes. Books were a big thing. But the things that stick out were the newspapers. Every night before supper we’d hear Gabriel Heatter, a famous news commentator, and after supper we’d get the news from the paper. My granddad would read out loud everything that he thought was relevant and pertinent to us, and to our lives. I was influenced a great deal by what was going on in the world. We were approaching World War II at that time. Later on, when I left high school, Professor Donald Crouch, gave me a book of Emerson, <em>Self Reliance,</em> and he said, “Just read it when you have time, and it might be helpful.”</p> <p><strong>After the trauma of moving and not speaking, and finally speaking again, how tough was the transition to the University of Michigan?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Well, by then I’d become a verbal person again, and it was important to go on to college. My youngest uncle Randy and I were the first members of our entire family to ever go to college. I was the first to ever go in the military. So we were special, we were the vanguard. As the vanguard it was important for me to pick one of the big three professions: doctor, lawyer Indian chief. One or the other. Maybe teaching, but that was not really encouraged.</p> <p>Because I thought I liked science — and I did like the Jules Verne kind of science in high school — I decided to choose medicine. And that was my rationale of going to the University of Michigan on a scholarship. It was not my favorite study, as I found out later. I was having great difficulty with physics and chemistry. So in my sophomore year, I took a senior anatomy class. I thought anatomy — being the thing that I should be most interested in — and if I could hack, as we called it, a senior class, I would continue. I didn’t hack the senior class. So in my junior year, I switched to the drama department. Also, because I was in ROTC. The Korean War was still raging, and I thought I’d be going to — if I didn’t get into a med school — I’d be off to war and probably dead the same fall. So I was determined to use my last two years in college doing something I thought I would enjoy, which was acting. And it was probably because there was girls over in the drama school too, you know?</p> <p>It was always hard in those days for the university theater wing to get enough boys to match the number of girls you had in those acting classes. Boys thought it was a little sissy. You know, “Sissiness going on over there!” because the drama school is too close to the music department and the dance department.</p> <p><strong>What was your grandfather’s reaction when you said you wanted to be an actor?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Well, I never announced it. But one day, my youngest uncle — the other one who was the first to go to college, Randy — and I were sitting out on the front porch. And he was brilliant. He ended up — he just retired from Boeing Aircraft in Wichita, Kansas. And he knew he wanted to be an engineer, you know, and we would — you know, boys boasting — I couldn’t top that. So I said, “Well, I’m gonna be an actor on the stage,” and <em>whop!</em> from behind. My grandaddy had been listening behind the screen door. That was his way of discouraging that kind of thinking, you know. I was not only forbidden to see my father, the idea that you would really take seriously a life of a troubadour! I mean, my people were very, very simple. They were peasant people, you know? So the idea of somebody making a living as an actor or singer! You sang in church, you know, and you didn’t act at all. You tried not to act, you tried to tell the truth. The idea of being a troubadour on the road singing for your supper was very disturbing to him. So, that was his way his way of discouraging that kind of thinking.</p> <p><strong>Did his thinking change as your career progressed?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: No, but his insane wife — my grandma, Maggie — hers changed. This is a woman whose bedtime stories were about lynchings and hurricanes and floods and rapes and murders. Those were her bedtime stories! For me to go into drama, that kind of turned her on a little bit. I got a job over at the little opera house in Manistee, Michigan, the county seat. We had a summer theater there. She was always the first to be there, in the front row. Wanted to see me in these dramas. So she opened the door, as far as the family was concerned, about allowing this to happen.</p> <p><strong>What was it about acting that so aroused your passion and commitment?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: It wasn’t acting. It was language. It was speech. It was the thing that I’d been denied all those years and had denied myself all those years. I now had a great — an abnormal — appreciation for it, you know. And it was the idea that you can do a play — like a Shakespeare play, or any well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever — and say things you could never imagine saying, never imagine thinking in your own life. You could say these things! That’s what it’s still about, whether it’s the movies or TV or what. That what it’s still about.</p> <p><strong>When did you know this was what you wanted to do with your life? Was there a defining moment or did it just happen?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: I really think I ambled through a lot of my life, or ambled from one thing to the other. I wasn’t a lazy kid. I’d gotten that, not a work ethic, but a survival ethic built into me during my youth. I knew I had to make a living, but the idea of being a plumber was not a bad thing.</p> <p>When I was in New York after I left the Army, I studied for two years at the American Theater Wing, studied acting which involved dance and fencing and speech classes and history of theater, all that. I was preparing myself for the theater, and… I got a little job here and a job there, but it wasn’t going well, and I considered some time before the mid-60s that maybe I should consider something else. And I went to NYU for some vocational testing, vocational guidance. And they found that I had a talent, perhaps, in architecture. So I applied to Pratt and Parsons for that kind of training. And I was prepared to say bye-bye to acting, go on to something else, and before I joined my fall classes, I got a job out in Indiana that set me back on the track of acting.</p> <p>I don’t ever want to be a sentimentalist. I prefer to be a realist. I’m not a romantic really. I never approached the show business from a sentimental point of view. I never saw it as a romantic and glamorous place. I knew real show business from my father’s line. My father who had been an actor since he left the world of boxing. He was a prize fighter when he first — and a man I never really knew, a man I — allegedly I was face to face with him once when I was about two, three days old — and didn’t meet again until I was an adult, was not allowed to meet him ’til I was an adult. But, I knew of his career through his mother, and I knew he was not very successful, but I didn’t know how good an actor he was. I found out later he was quite a wonderful actor who excelled in the element of simplicity. But because he was one, black, and then blacklisted because of his involvement with labor unions and so on during those years, he just didn’t get work. Certainly not in the areas that <em>Red Channels</em> controlled, which was movies and taped television. He got work occasionally in theater, you know. And he told me when I finally met him, he said, “I’ve not been able to make a living at this, so I want you to know that’s a possibility; that you don’t enter it for the money. You enter it because you love doing the work.”</p> <p>So I had that reality orientation. I’ve never looked at it as a romantic place, or as a place to make big bucks. Perhaps I should have. I’d have been richer if I’d gone with the bank, but I’ve applied that contentment, measure.</p> <p>I was as content Off-Broadway as I was in a big Hollywood movie, and, I just try to be content wherever I am, you know. An, it doesn’t solve anything, it just makes you able to move, from one — I think I was told yesterday by some wonderful brilliant mind that I met on the path out here, Churchill said, “Success is moving from one failure to the next with undiminished enthusiasm.” Well, that’s what I was able to do from my early — so nothing threw me, really. And nothing embittered me, which is important, because I think ethnic people and women in this society can end up being embittered because of the lack of affirmative action, you know. Or the lack of removal of those ceilings, those glass ceilings. And that never happened to me, and I feel blessed. I’m a healthier person because of it. I can pass on a healthier state of mind to my son because of it.</p> <p><strong>Tell us about your relationship with your father. You sought him out in New York after all those years.</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: When I was finally allowed to see him. I was legally banned from seeing him until I could decide for myself. There was such animosity between those two families. It’s still unresolved. It will never be resolved with my father. I had a meeting with him just a few days ago, and it’s a mess, but I accept that. He doesn’t seem to accept it. He still wants to sort it out. He wants to place him and me and my son into some sort of galaxy. That’s a sign of romanticism, and I don’t care for it.</p> <p>Family relationships come from really real bonding, not from something imagined, or a presumption about genetic inheritance. It has to be real, and I think a lot of the problems we have as a society is because we don’t acknowledge that family is important and it has to be people who are present, you know and mothers and fathers, both are not present enough with children. I’m not present enough with my son. I’m here and he’s there, you know. Often that’s the case, and that’s a problem, you know. You don’t build a bond without being present.</p> <p><strong>Could you tell us something about your struggle to become an actor in New York City?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: It was as it should be. Because of my father’s orientation, I was not… I did not expect anything. No one asked me to be an actor, so no one owed me. There was no entitlement. Still is not. It is one of the — I think the arts in general, no one asked you. They might ask you to fly an airplane; they might ask you to raise wheat. But they don’t ask you to sing a song. That is still considered, in this society, one of those elitist or luxury endeavors, you know. So the idea that you are essential has not occurred yet. I think with the lack of appreciation for the National Endowment, it seems it may never occur in my time. But I think someday it must occur, because it has occurred in all great societies, all over Europe and England. The arts have always been an important ingredient to the health of a nation, but we haven’t gotten there, yet. And so actors have to accept that, you know. No one asked us. So the idea of not getting work, that’s part of the territory.</p> <p><strong>Was there someone who gave you the break you needed?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: That’s hard to say. There was not some one, there was a time. I happened to happened to land in a time, in the middle ’60s, that without knowing it, and without being told by the history of theater — which we now see from a historical point of view was an explosive time. I got out of the Army — in my world — I came to New York, for instance, when the civil rights movement was just beginning, and that created a certain energy, a certain rumble, a certain impetus for black actors. And the game was not to get caught up in it, not to get swept away by it, but to keep on track of what you wanted to do. You weren’t going to the theater to change the world, but you had a chance to affect the world, the thinking and the feelings of the world.</p> <p>Athol Fugard was one of the playwrights I encountered in those days. Talking about South Africa, he always said that he never assumed that he could change anybody’s mind. But he knew he could change their feelings, and their feelings would affect their minds. That’s all we can expect in terms of missionary work. I think it was more of an unusual time than any given person. And, in that time I met Athol Fugard, and so many others that helped and influenced me in the right directions.</p> <p>I met the whole avant garde world, and in England it was referred to as the “angry young men” period. In Europe it was <em>avant-garde</em>, and we were “theater of the absurd.” Put together, you saw, internationally, theater now being available to the proletarian, that anybody could be an actor. You didn’t have to have the elite family background of the Barrymores. The door was open for Marlon Brando, you know, real common man. When Marlon did his work, when he did his Stanley Kowalski, every truck driver in New York said, “Hey, I could do that! That’s me, I could do that!” And that was very important. It was a very, very important movement, the “I can do that” movement, you know. And I was a part of that, you know. So that included women could play men’s roles, and blacks could play white roles, and truck drivers could play Marlon Brando roles. And I think that’s what sort of opened life up for me, opened up that artistic life up for me.</p> <p><strong>Why do you think you have succeeded while others have not?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Well, I know actors who, at that time, were better than I was. One in particular who was so frightened by his own talent, he would only go to auditions drunk. Self-destruction. And I think, on the other end, there were actors who were not as good as I was, perhaps who could have hung in too, but began to blame everything on race. You know? I mean they were black or whatever, minority race. And I did none of these things. I sort of stayed straight, you know, and square. Very, very square, but always able to walk straight in line, you know, toward my goal. Toward it. The goal was not really important. The goal wasn’t to be a millionaire or to be a Hollywood star. That was not the goal. The goal was something about — the goal was to find the goal, but I knew where it was. It had to do with getting on that stage and finding better and better plays — and hopefully movie scripts — to do. To be a part of good story telling. The goal was about that. And nothing threw me off, neither poverty nor discouragement. Nothing threw me off. I didn’t know Churchill’s theory then, but I lived it.</p> <p><strong>How would you explain to someone who knows nothing about acting why it’s so important to you?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Acting is not about anything romantic, not even fantasy, although you do create fantasy. It’s not about that. It’s simply very concrete. A playwright conjures a vision of a world, and he interprets that world through words. You then take those words on stage or on the screen and try to bring it alive by the interrelations between one character and another and what they say to each other. In movies it’s less important what they say; it’s how they behave. It’s about that.</p> <p>So when a young man yesterday from Chapel Hill asked me — you know, he said he’s determined to be the best actor in the world — “Where do I go?” He used the phrase “dream.” He said, “I have a dream of being the best actor in the world.” And I said, “If you can turn that dream to imaging, you can image yourself, imagine yourself, and then achieving it, being able to plumb the depths of human feeling as much as Marlon Brando’s able to, and then on the other end, the technique. Find clarity and brilliance of language as much as Richard Burton did. Then you might be the best actor in the world.” But it’s doing real things. It’s nothing about fantasy.</p> <p><strong>What kind of setbacks did you meet on the road to success?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Setbacks? Yeah. There were specific ones, but it didn’t diminish my enthusiasm. Being told one day that I had a job, my first job in a TV series, the next day to going to a party and finding another young actor had the job. Somebody had lied to me. But that was the game. I’ve learned that game could be even more vicious if you let yourself feel it that way.</p> <p>The idea that you’re competing with fellow human beings can get rough. My wife knows actresses who, when they go to auditions, they will deliberately distract all the other actresses. They’ll start telling stories. They’ll start asking questions deliberately, to throw you off your balance. Well, I don’t like to hear about stories like that and I certainly don’t like to — my first time on camera was with a wonderful actress named Diana Sands, and Diana began to try to tell me — my first time on camera — she began to try to tell me, “Look, you know, if you want them to use your take, then you do something to distract the other actor’s take.” I said, “You know, I don’t think I want to know that. I don’t think I want to be that busy manipulating because I came here to act, you know; and if I use all my energy manipulating, I’m not gonna do my job.” And there was something very disturbing about all that, you know. She was a brilliant actress and could do both, could manipulate as well as do her job. But, I didn’t think I could do that, you know.</p> <p><strong>How did you deal with self-doubts, with fears of failure?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Oh no, you don’t have self doubt. You don’t have fear of failure. If you do, you gotta take care of it. If the way you approach your goal is right for you, then you won’t have self doubt. Undiminished enthusiasm always stays with you.</p> <p>You’re the only person who can tell whether you have talent or not, and there’s a certain point where you’ve go to be really honest with yourself and say, “Yeah, I do, and I’m going on.” or “No, I don’t.” And your parents can’t do it for you, and critics can’t do it for you. Once you’ve determined that, then there should be no room for doubt, you know. There is room that, “Well, maybe this isn’t the right role for me.” That’s always going on, you know. You’re told every day you’re not right for this role. And they might, “It’s ’cause you’re too tall.” They usually don’t know why you’re not right for it. It’s just, you didn’t ring a bell for them, that’s all. And that’s okay. You’ve got to accept the fact that you don’t ring a bell for everybody.</p> <p>There’s only one actor I know who does: Morgan Freeman. He can ring a bell on the drama side, on the comedy side. It’s rare for this actor to miss in terms of the way he achieves his work, and it’s also rare for him to miss in his character. Whatever he does, it always seems to work in his character. That’s very rare. Most of us don’t have that going for us. We will fail to ring somebody’s bell, and that’s okay.</p> <p>When I first came to the theater, I followed Sidney Poitier’s generation, which is not far ahead of mine, a couple of years. He had established the height of what young black actors could do, the rest of us were there to establish the breadth. I figured there was room for all of us: for Lou Gossett, for Raymond St. Jacques, for Godfrey Cambridge, for Billy Dee Williams. There was room for all of us, so we never felt competitive, and that was a blessing. I continued to feel that.</p> <p><strong>Do you see Jean Genet’s play <em>The Blacks</em> as a turning point in your career?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: I think usually there’s the turning point that’s very public that’s acknowledged in <em>Newsweek</em> magazine and whatever, and then there’s those turning points that nobody notices. At first, <em>The Blacks</em> was one of those quiet turning points. It came to be acknowledged later on, as the production went on, year after year.</p> <p>I remember meeting with the producer. She said, “James, I’m worried. Except for Roscoe Lee Brown, I don’t know whether I can gather a group of black actors who could handle this language. It wasn’t classical language but language that doesn’t have an ethnic or street twist or a rural twist. She was not sure she could find the actors would were trained vocally for that kind of speech. She was challenging me too, and I said, “Well, you might not be able to, but start with Roscoe, and I think you might.” And she did. She built a cast around Roscoe that could handle the language.</p> <p>I remember Roscoe and I were referred to as “fine mummers” in one of the reviews, “There’s these two fine mummers.” But she did gather a group of actors who could handle language, and that was kind of a phenomenon. We weren’t playing sharecroppers, we weren’t playing street dudes, we were playing people of the world. It had some relevance to the movement at that time, the civil rights movement, and acknowledged the danger of racism. Genet was very clever. He wasn’t saying whites were bad and blacks were victims. He was saying any race who takes on a superior position is going to be threatened by the other race taking it on. It could flip-flop. It was an important message at the time. It’s a play that’s difficult to do now, because it tapped into the sense of America’s conscience as it existed then, and I don’t think that conscience is as healthy today as it was then. We’re too cynical for that play to work.</p> <p><strong>How do you deal with criticism? Do you react to it?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: That’s a tough one, because the critic is there as an operative in that industry. He’s supposed to have a job that helps make the industry work. He’s supposed to inform people what’s worth seeing and what’s not worth seeing, according to his opinion. Or if you’re Kenneth Tynan, he’s supposed to tell you what you tried to do and how well you succeeded. And that’s very valuable. But I learned early on.</p> <p>I learned early on. I think I was doing a play with J.D. Cannon, who was one of the actors in the <em>McCloud</em> series. And J.D. said, “Look Jimmy, we’re gonna open tomorrow night. Would you do me a favor? Don’t tell me what the critics said. I can’t handle it.” I said, “What! You can’t handle it? If they’re good can I tell you?” He said, “No. Especially when they’re good. Because whatever they say is gonna distort your ability to go on stage the next night and do the work you should do. If they say you were good, you have to try and be good. You have to try and ‘What did I do that was so good?’ And you’re distracted. If you’re bad, you’re totally defeated, or your ego’s deflated, and you’re distracted,” he says, “I’d rather not know.” And I decided at that moment that I’d do the same thing. I’d not read them anymore. I let my wife read them, and my agent read them, and if there’s something I should know, they would interpret it for me. But, I would not read that person’s opinion.</p> <p>It reminded me of one of the two books we were encouraged to read. It had nothing to do with show business. One was <em>Zen and the Art of Archery.</em> The other was Rilke’s <em>To a Young Poet</em> his series of essays and letters to a poet. And…</p> <p>Rilke had said to this young poet, “I sense this is what you’re doing, you’re writing for the critics. You’re writing to please the critics.” He says, “That’ll never work. Because they’re not pleasable. You must write to please yourself. And then they might be pleased, you know. But they’re secondary to what you do.” And so this all began to fall into place for me and I respect what critics do, but I don’t — their work trails mine. I mean, I’ve done my work, and I’m gonna keep looking ahead, and not behind at some reflection.</p> <p><strong>You’ve met your share of controversy in your career, in the play about Paul Robeson, even over your performance as Darth Vader. How do you deal with that?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Well the Darth Vader controversy I was able to laugh off. Raymond St. Jacques, I think, wrote a letter to the editor saying, “How dare you present the only black in the galaxy as the bad guy?” I said, “Well heck, I’m just special effects. It’s David Prowse that’s in that costume.”</p> <p>I have not been able to laugh off the Paul Robeson controversy. I write about it in my book a little bit. It’s still painful. Avery Brooks now takes the same production, exact same words, and presents it to the public, and he adds the fact that he’s a singer; and it’s a glorious production. No controversy at all. In my time, Paul Robeson, Jr. had not resolved his position as guardian of his father’s image. He had not resolved it yet. We got in his way. We became a bone in his side, and so he became a bone in our side. I just happened to get in Paul Jr.’s way at the wrong time. He haunted the production and he concocted social apartheid to bring the production down. The young playwright Phillip Hayes Dean said, “He’s acting like a McCarthyite himself now.” But you know, victims of tyranny learn from the bad guys. You see it in Israel, you see it in black people. If you learn from the bad guys, you end up doing what they do.</p> <p><strong>What characteristics do you think are most important for success in any field?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: I really don’t know. I ambled into this, so I didn’t record what works and what doesn’t work. I don’t know if we ever learn from history anyway. You’ve got to learn for yourself. Given that, I think every actor has to find out what works for himself. I’m hesitant to advise young actors because their world is so different from mine. How you approach an audition is very different. I think they have to dress up more, because we’re talking about image in movies more than we’re talking about the stage. I think you have to come on with an image. You have to dress the role much more than we ever thought of doing. We’d be embarrassed by that. That a brunette woman would dye her hair blond just for an audition is probably not unheard of now in a Hollywood situation. The business of training is very different now. I think you have to learn the basics.</p> <p>You have to learn something more than just acting. You have to learn how to behave, how to fill your space on the stage or in film. You learn the difference also. That the film space is inner space, but you’ve got to fill it. You know, you watch Paul Newman, and he’s jam packed in a very small area of his face. All the energy that I would express in my whole body, he’s expressing right here: Zhooooom! That’s a hard one to learn for a stage actor.</p> <p><strong>What do you know about success now that you didn’t know when you were younger?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Nothing. It was not about achievement. It’s about setting on the path and going. I would’ve been a good explorer. I would’ve been good with Lewis and Clark. Cause you’re out there, and there’s nothing telling you whether you’re successful or not. There are no landmarks. You know you want to get to the Northwest corner of the country, but all you can do is walk. And there’s space and space. It must have been a wild and weird world, but I think I would have fit in very well there.</p> <p><strong>Is there something you’ve not yet had a chance to do in your career that you’d still like to do?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: No. I don’t think I’ve done “the role” in film that I could say, “I leave that as my legacy.” I’ve done it on stage, but I’ve not done it in film; I’ve not found that role yet. I’d like to find it. It’s not too late. I’m still learning the art of film acting, and once I learn it, I might find it and do it before I retire. But that’s not something I need to do, that’s something I’d like to do.</p> <p><strong>Is there anything outside of acting that you’ve always wanted to do?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: I want to rebuild a world similar to the one I came out of. We had the Mississippi River, and in flood time, when the flood subsided, you could walk out and see catfish in the mud puddles. I’m digging a little lake now, a three-acre lake. I want to stock it with fish. I want to rebuild that self-sufficiency that I knew as a child. That’s got nothing to do with show business.</p> <p><strong>What do you see as the greatest challenge to our society in the 21st century?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: We’ve got two big ones. One is health and one is sanity. I won’t say “racism.” I say “sanity,” because racism is a form of insanity. Unfortunately, giving it a name almost sanctions it, as though we understand it. We don’t understand it. Religion becomes a part of it, and that’s insanity. Giving it a religious name almost sanctions it, and that’s wrong. We shouldn’t sanction these things, we should try to understand them. We have extreme psychotic situations that are disturbing our balance as a nation.</p> <p>We have health imbalances, in the way we’ve gone about handling disease. Now there are doctors and scientists trying to find out what we did wrong with antibiotics. Where do we go from here to solve the serious health problems we’re confronting? Including drugs. It’s a health problem. To deal with it only as a crime problem won’t work. Because as long as there’s money involved, it’s going to be as much a part of the economy as oil is. So you’ve got to deal with it in a whole other way.</p> <p>When my mom came with her first bid to take me into her life, I didn’t know her, because she had gone off with her new husband. They were migrant workers in the Delta region of Mississippi. They were grain harvesters, rice harvesters. In those days, large farmers would line the male workers up each morning and put a thimble full of cocaine into each shirt pocket, and the government sanctioned it, because it made them work happier and harder. I don’t think the government knew what it was doing, but at the same time, there was not a lot of addiction that came out of that period. So the addiction has to do with something psychic, mental, rather than something physical. The addiction is the despair that drives you to want to stay asleep all the time, to knock yourself out all the time. That didn’t exist then, so that cocaine itself was not addictive. So we’ve got to deal with it as a mental health as well as a physical health problem. That’s all, then we’re perfect!</p> <p><strong>What advice do you have for young people starting out today?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Carl Sandburg said, “Take no advice including this.” I think I should stop right there.</p> <p><strong>What book or play would you choose to read to your grandchildren?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: My son is 13, and he used to be read to all that I need! His room is full of books. His mom did most of the reading to him. If I’m able to utter a sound when he has a child, he’d have to start pretty early. I’d like to read him some of the books we read my son. I don’t know when I’d get to a serious book, that is a book that I think would be meaningful to the child for the rest of his life.</p> <p><strong>You write in your book about your Irish and Native American ancestors as well as your black ones. Was it a source of anxiety or problems when you were growing up? Did that upset you?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: Why should you be upset? You are who you are. Blacks have become as racist as racist white people, and have a hard time acknowledging it. But no, we had no anxiety about having white blood in us. How could we? We all did. So what? You end up being who you are, and if you can’t come to peace with that, you’re in a lot of trouble. To deny you had Indian blood, deny you had black blood, deny you had white blood, is part of the insanity I’m talking about.</p> <p>People say, “What do you do about the bombings in the churches?” What do you say? You don’t say anything. You have a response, hopefully a positive, a creative response. But the idea of talking about it? You can’t rationalize insanity. You can’t talk about it either. You lock it up. Or you treat it.</p> <p><strong>What does the American Dream mean to you?</strong></p> <p>James Earl Jones: I’m not a dreamer. I never acknowledged there was one. Each person has a place they want to get to. I just defined mine as this self-sufficient world, which is the farm. Is that the American dream? No! Most people don’t want to be on a farm. I notice that Canadians are more inclined to be that way. Every urban Canadian has the dacha, or the shack out in the woods. I don’t know if there’s an American dream. Or that you’d call it an American dream. It might be a human dream. “Dream” sounds like fantasy. I think there are problems we have to solve, if you want to call that our dream. Solutions are our dreams.</p> <p><strong>Thank you very much for speaking with us today.</strong></p> <p>You’re welcome.</p> </div>  </aside>  <div class="read-more__toggle collapsed" data-toggle="collapse" data-target="#full-interview"><a href="#" class="sans-4 btn">Read full interview</a></div> </article> </section> </div> <div class="tab-pane fade" id="gallery" role="tabpanel"> <section class="isotope-wrapper">  <header class="toolbar toolbar--gallery bg-white clearfix"> <div class="col-md-6"> <div class="serif-4">James Earl Jones Gallery</div> </div> <div class="col-md-6 text-md-right isotope-toolbar"> <ul class="list-unstyled list-inline m-b-0 text-brand-primary sans-4"> <li class="list-inline-item" data-filter=".photo"><i class="icon-icon_camera"></i>56 photos</li> </ul> </div> </header> <div class="isotope-gallery isotope-box single-achiever__gallery clearfix"> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3636363636364" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-011.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones's grandmother Elnora Jones." data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones's grandmother Elnora Jones." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-011-279x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-011.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0496.jpg" data-image-caption="Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Stephen Sondheim receives the Academy Gold Medal from Academy Awards Council member James Earl Jones at the 2005 International Achievement Summit in New York City. (© Academy of Achievement) " data-image-copyright="Academy2005_0496" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0496-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0496-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.56315789473684" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gwh_alexander_joneslandscapecrop.jpg" data-image-caption="In 1968, James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander starred as husband and wife in Howard Sackler’s searing drama <i>The Great White Hope</i>, a fictionalized account of the life of boxing legend Jack Johnson that ran at the Alvin Theatre. Jones (seen at right) and Alexander were awarded Tony Awards for Best Actor and Best Featured Actress in a Play." data-image-copyright="gwh_alexander_joneslandscapecrop" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gwh_alexander_joneslandscapecrop-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gwh_alexander_joneslandscapecrop-760x428.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.8" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-chicago_1184_JFR.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones presenting the Golden Plate Award to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Prime Minister of Turkey, at the 2004 International Achievement Summit in Chicago, Illinois." data-image-copyright="et-chicago_1184_JFR" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-chicago_1184_JFR-380x304.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-chicago_1184_JFR-760x608.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.501976284585" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-je-getty-50308111.jpg" data-image-caption="1991: James Earl Jones holding his awards in the Press Room at the Primetime Emmy Awards." data-image-copyright="jones-je-getty-50308111" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-je-getty-50308111-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-je-getty-50308111-506x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2687813021703" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-great-white-hope-broadway.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones tells off a former paramour, Marlene Warfield, in the play <i>The Great White Hope</i> on October 10, 1968. Location is unknown. (AP Photo)" data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-great-white-hope-broadway-299x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-great-white-hope-broadway-599x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.496062992126" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/0000469_75.jpeg" data-image-caption="1979: Still of James Earl Jones, Damon Evans and Kristoff St. John in <i>Roots: The Next Generations</i>. (ABC Photo Archives)" data-image-copyright="JAMES EARL JONES, DAMON EVANS, KRISTOFF ST. JOHN" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/0000469_75-254x380.jpeg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/0000469_75-508x760.jpeg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.4" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/jones-james-earle-3-Feature-Image-2800x1120.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones" data-image-copyright="jones-james-earle-3-feature-image-2800x1120" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/jones-james-earle-3-Feature-Image-2800x1120-380x152.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/jones-james-earle-3-Feature-Image-2800x1120-760x304.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/55212cf8e4b025fd8741f4ff_cv1.jpg" data-image-caption="2015: James Earl Jones performs a monologue from <i>You Can't Take It With You</i>." data-image-copyright="2015: James Earl Jones Performs a Monologue From 'You Can't Take It With You'" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/55212cf8e4b025fd8741f4ff_cv1-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/55212cf8e4b025fd8741f4ff_cv1-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.56184210526316" title="2015: James Earl Jones and 90-year-old Cicely Tyson reunite on Broadway in the two-person play The Gin Game." data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - 2015: James Earl Jones and 90-year-old Cicely Tyson reunite on Broadway in the two-person play The Gin Game.">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/113015-Celebs-James-Earl-Jones-Cicely-Tyson-REunite-on-Broadway-in-the-Gin-Game.jpg" data-image-caption="2015: James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson reunite on Broadway in <i>The Gin Game</i>." data-image-copyright="113015-celebs-james-earl-jones-cicely-tyson-reunite-on-broadway-in-the-gin-game" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/113015-Celebs-James-Earl-Jones-Cicely-Tyson-REunite-on-Broadway-in-the-Gin-Game-380x214.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/113015-Celebs-James-Earl-Jones-Cicely-Tyson-REunite-on-Broadway-in-the-Gin-Game-760x427.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.6544117647059" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-009.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones, his cousin Robert Earl, Uncle Randy, Aunts Helen and Ozella in Michigan about 1941." data-image-copyright="jon2-009" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-009-230x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-009.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.1603053435115" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-in-conan-barbaren-1982.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom in the 1982 film <i>Conan the Barbarian</i>." data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones as Thulsa Doom in the 1982 film, Conan the Barbarian." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-in-conan-barbaren-1982-327x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-in-conan-barbaren-1982-655x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4814814814815" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gingame2.jpg" data-image-caption="2015: Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones in the Broadway revival of <i>The Gin Game</i>." data-image-copyright="gingame2" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gingame2-257x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/gingame2-513x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.501976284585" title="The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/song-of-hiawatha-e1459950289718.jpg" data-image-caption="<i>The Song of Hiawatha</i> by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow." data-image-copyright="The Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/song-of-hiawatha-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/04/song-of-hiawatha-506x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/e0bd04fa660430bd3d7ee3e02e414fe3.jpg" data-image-caption="2008: Phylicia Rashad and James Earl Jones in a new production of <i>Cat on a Hot Tin Roof</i>, directed by Debbie Allen. (Joan Marcus)" data-image-copyright="Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/e0bd04fa660430bd3d7ee3e02e414fe3-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/e0bd04fa660430bd3d7ee3e02e414fe3-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.75" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/drivingmissdaisy.jpg" data-image-caption="2010: James Earl Jones and Vanessa Redgrave, stars of <i>Driving Miss Daisy</i>." data-image-copyright="ARTS STAGE" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/drivingmissdaisy-380x285.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/drivingmissdaisy-760x570.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2687813021703" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/best-pictures-of-ray-aranha.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones and Mary Alice in <i>Fences,</i> which premiered on Broadway at the 46th Street Theatre on March 26, 1987, and closed on June 26, 1988, after 525 performances and 11 previews. Jones won Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play and Alice won Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play." data-image-copyright="best-pictures-of-ray-aranha" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/best-pictures-of-ray-aranha-300x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/best-pictures-of-ray-aranha-599x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0500.jpg" data-image-caption="Composer Stephen Sondheim receives the Academy of Achievement's Gold Medal from Awards Council member James Earl Jones at the 2005 International Achievement Summit during a Broadway symposium in New York City." data-image-copyright="Academy2005_0500" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0500-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Academy2005_0500-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.65312046444122" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-005.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones's great-grandparents, Wyatt and Shirley Jeeter Connolly, and family on the family farm, 1908. James Earl Jones's grandfather, John Henry Connolly, is second from right in the back row." data-image-copyright="jon2-005" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-005-380x248.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-005.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.71842105263158" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-04-2002-jamesearljones_princebandar.jpg" data-image-caption="Awards Council member James Earl Jones and guest of honor Prince Bandar bin Sultan Al Saud, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, at the Banquet of the Golden Plate during the 2002 International Achievement Summit in Dublin, Ireland." data-image-copyright="et-04-2002-jamesearljones_princebandar" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-04-2002-jamesearljones_princebandar-380x273.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2017/08/et-04-2002-jamesearljones_princebandar-760x546.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5261044176707" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AP_8703270119.jpg" data-image-caption="Lena Horne embraces actor James Earl Jones after his opening night performance, on March 27, 1987, in the Broadway play <i>Fences</i> at the 46th street Theatre in New York. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)" data-image-copyright="Lena Horne and James Earl Jones" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AP_8703270119-249x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/AP_8703270119-498x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.6450216450216" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/57108597.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones voiced Darth Vader throughout the original <i>Star Wars</i> trilogy. (Photo by Jim Spellman/WireImage)" data-image-copyright=""Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones" Charity Premiere - New York" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/57108597-231x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/57108597-462x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-james-earl-001a.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones" data-image-copyright="jones-james-earl-001a" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-james-earl-001a-380x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-james-earl-001a.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4990138067061" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-at-the-2016-tony-awards-5-5689.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones and his wife, Cecilia Hart, at the 2016 Tony Awards. Hart and Jones married in 1982, the same year that he played Othello opposite her Desdemona on Broadway." data-image-copyright="james-earl-jones-at-the-2016-tony-awards-5-5689" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-at-the-2016-tony-awards-5-5689-253x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-at-the-2016-tony-awards-5-5689-507x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00248009.jpg" data-image-caption="1973: James Earl Jones in a scene from the Circle In the Square production of the play <i>The Iceman Cometh</i>." data-image-copyright="jones-je-timepix-00248009" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00248009-380x254.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00248009-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-2015.jpg" data-image-caption="2015: Actor James Earl Jones attends <i>The Gin Game</i> Broadway opening night after-party at Sardi's in New York City. (Jemal Countess/Getty Images)" data-image-copyright=""The Gin Game" Broadway Opening Night - After Party" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-2015-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-2015-760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.8" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/JamesEarlJonesCloseup.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones" data-image-copyright="jamesearljonescloseup" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/JamesEarlJonesCloseup-380x304.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/JamesEarlJonesCloseup-760x608.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.74868421052632" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/James-Earl-Jones-Courtney-Vance-from-Fences-1987.jpg" data-image-caption="1987: James Earl Jones and Courtney Vance in <i>Fences</i>." data-image-copyright="1987: James Earl Jones and Courtney Vance from Fences." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/James-Earl-Jones-Courtney-Vance-from-Fences-1987-380x284.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/James-Earl-Jones-Courtney-Vance-from-Fences-1987-760x569.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.6304347826087" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-008.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones, his mother, Ruth, and his youngest uncle, Randy, about 1944." data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones, his mother Ruth, and his youngest uncle, Randy, about 1944." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-008-233x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-008.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2218649517685" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/James-Earl-Jones036.jpg" data-image-caption="National Medal of Arts recipient James Earl Jones." data-image-copyright="National Medal of Arts recipient James Earl Jones." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/James-Earl-Jones036-311x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/James-Earl-Jones036-622x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.1658031088083" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-007.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones on the family farm in Michigan, after the move north." data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones on the family farm in Michigan, after the move north." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-007-326x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-007.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.74736842105263" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-oscars-2014-african-american-award-nomin-001.jpg" data-image-caption="2011: James Earl Jones receives an Honorary Oscar by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the third annual Governors Awards." data-image-copyright="la-et-oscars-2014-african-american-award-nomin-001" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-oscars-2014-african-american-award-nomin-001-380x284.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-oscars-2014-african-american-award-nomin-001-760x568.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3513513513514" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-006.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones as a boy in Mississippi, early 1930s." data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones as a boy in Mississippi, early 1930s." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-006-281x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-006.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66578947368421" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/James_Earl_Jones_Headshot.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones" data-image-copyright="james_earl_jones_headshot" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/James_Earl_Jones_Headshot-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/James_Earl_Jones_Headshot-760x506.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5358361774744" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-003.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones as a baby, with his mother, Ruth Connolly Jones, in 1932." data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones as a baby, with his mother, Ruth Connolly Jones, in 1932." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-003-247x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-003.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.99473684210526" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-julie-harris-angela-lansbury-jerry-orbach-1969.jpg" data-image-caption="1969: Tony winners (L-R) James Earl Jones, Julie Harris, Angela Lansbury and Jerry Orbach pose together after receiving Tony awards at the 23rd Annual Tony Awards ceremony on April 20, 1969. Jones won Best Actor in a Play for <i>The Great White Hope</i>. Harris won Best Actress in a Play for <i>Forty Carats</i>. Lansbury won Best Actress in a Musical for <i>Dear World</i>. Orbach won Best Actor in a Play for <i>Promises, Promises</i>." data-image-copyright="james-earl-jones-julie-harris-angela-lansbury-jerry-orbach-1969" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-julie-harris-angela-lansbury-jerry-orbach-1969-380x378.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/james-earl-jones-julie-harris-angela-lansbury-jerry-orbach-1969-760x756.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2258064516129" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00198068.jpg" data-image-caption="1961: Cicely Tyson and James Earl Jones in a scene from the Off-Broadway production of the play <i>The Blacks</i>." data-image-copyright="jones-je-timepix-00198068" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00198068-310x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00198068-620x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.25" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl406.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones" data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl406-304x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl406-608x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.69868421052632" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-Corbis-HU056633.jpg" data-image-caption="1978: James Earl Jones as Paul Robeson, with his bust, at Her Majesty's Theatre in London. (Hulton-Deutsch Collection/CORBIS)" data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones Poses With Bust" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-Corbis-HU056633-380x266.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-James-Earl-Corbis-HU056633-760x531.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.72666666666667" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-012.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones (back row, number 27) on the Dickson High School basketball team in Brethren, Michigan, ca. 1947." data-image-copyright="jon2-012" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-012-380x276.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-012.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.3427561837456" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_lub42kxKP81qb9wbfo1_r1_1280.jpg" data-image-caption="May 29, 1961: James Earl Jones. (Carl Van Vechten)" data-image-copyright="May 29, 1961: James Earl Jones. (Carl Van Vechten)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_lub42kxKP81qb9wbfo1_r1_1280-283x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_lub42kxKP81qb9wbfo1_r1_1280-566x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2430939226519" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-010.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones's grandparents, John Henry and Maggie Connolly, on the front porch of their homestead in Mississippi, ca. 1933." data-image-copyright="jon2-010" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-010-306x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jon2-010.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67368421052632" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-cm-james-earl-jones-cicely-tyson-20151014.jpg" data-image-caption="2015: James Earl Jones and Cicely Tyson on Broadway in <i>The Gin Game</i>. (Joan Marcus/Associated Press)" data-image-copyright="la-et-cm-james-earl-jones-cicely-tyson-20151014" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-cm-james-earl-jones-cicely-tyson-20151014-380x256.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-cm-james-earl-jones-cicely-tyson-20151014-760x512.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.67763157894737" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-cm-cecilia-hart-dead-20161022-snap.jpg" data-image-caption="2012: James Earl Jones (R) and Cecilia Hart arrive at the 84th Annual Academy Awards in Hollywood, California. " data-image-copyright="la-et-cm-cecilia-hart-dead-20161022-snap" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-cm-cecilia-hart-dead-20161022-snap-380x258.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/la-et-cm-cecilia-hart-dead-20161022-snap-760x515.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.77763157894737" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-james-earl-forest-whitaker.jpg" data-image-caption="Forest Whitaker and James Earl Jones at the 2009 SAG Awards." data-image-copyright="Forest Whitaker and James Earl Jones at the 2009 SAG Awards." data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-james-earl-forest-whitaker-380x296.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/jones-james-earl-forest-whitaker-760x591.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.7633410672854" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-06175282.jpg" data-image-caption="1961: James Earl Jones in scene from <i>The Blacks</i>, avant-garde play by Jean Genet." data-image-copyright="jones-je-timepix-06175282" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-06175282-216x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-06175282-431x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66578947368421" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-05540634.jpg" data-image-caption="1981: James Earl Jones, Graeme Campbell and Dianne Wiest in a scene from the Broadway revival of the play <i>Othello</i>." data-image-copyright="jones-je-timepix-05540634" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-05540634-380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-05540634-760x506.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.68947368421053" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00829866.jpg" data-image-caption="1968: James Earl Jones, star of the play <i>The Great White Hope</i> talking with boxing champ Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), following his performance." data-image-copyright="jones-je-timepix-00829866" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00829866-380x262.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00829866-760x524.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2603648424544" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00251549.jpg" data-image-caption="1974: James Earl Jones and Kevin Conway in a revival of the play <i>Of Mice and Men.</i>" data-image-copyright="jones-je-timepix-00251549" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00251549-301x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Jones-JE-timepix-00251549-603x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5261044176707" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/wp-AP_8703270119.jpg" data-image-caption="March 27, 1987: Lena Horne embraces James Earl Jones after his opening night performance in the Broadway play <i>Fences</i> at the 46th Street Theatre in New York. (AP Photo/Mario Suriani)" data-image-copyright="Lena Horne and James Earl Jones" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/wp-AP_8703270119-249x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/wp-AP_8703270119-498x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="0.66710526315789" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/vaa-james-earl-jones-with-wife-cecilia-.jpg" data-image-caption="2014: James Earl Jones and his wife, Cecilia Hart, at the Voice Arts™ Gala in New York. (Stephanie Ciccarelli)" data-image-copyright="vaa-james-earl-jones-with-wife-cecilia" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/vaa-james-earl-jones-with-wife-cecilia--380x253.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/vaa-james-earl-jones-with-wife-cecilia--760x507.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5573770491803" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_nibyqpnZUU1qgtqgzo1_1280.jpg" data-image-caption="May 29, 1961: James Earl Jones. (Carl Van Vechten)" data-image-copyright="May 29, 1961: James Earl Jones. (Carl Van Vechten)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_nibyqpnZUU1qgtqgzo1_1280-244x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_nibyqpnZUU1qgtqgzo1_1280-488x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.4587332053743" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_n0w9m4tw241qa2j8co1_1280.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones at 30 in 1961. (Carl Van Vechten)" data-image-copyright="James Earl Jones at 30 in 1961. (Carl Van Vechten)" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_n0w9m4tw241qa2j8co1_1280-261x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/tumblr_n0w9m4tw241qa2j8co1_1280-521x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.2709030100334" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Robert_Earl_Jones_in_Langston_Hughes_Dont_You_Want_to_be_Free-_23_June_1938_photograph_by_Carl_Van_Vechten.jpg" data-image-caption="1938: Robert Earl Jones, James Earl Jones's father in Langston Hughes's <i>Don't You Want to Be Free</i>. (Carl Van Vechten)" data-image-copyright="robert_earl_jones_in_langston_hughes_dont_you_want_to_be_free-_23_june_1938_photograph_by_carl_van_vechten" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Robert_Earl_Jones_in_Langston_Hughes_Dont_You_Want_to_be_Free-_23_June_1938_photograph_by_Carl_Van_Vechten-299x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Robert_Earl_Jones_in_Langston_Hughes_Dont_You_Want_to_be_Free-_23_June_1938_photograph_by_Carl_Van_Vechten-598x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.5353535353535" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/PA-7315411.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones, star of Broadway’s new triumph <i>The Great White Hope</i>, photographed in his home in New York City, October 7, 1968. (AP Photo)" data-image-copyright="pa-7315411" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/PA-7315411-247x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/PA-7315411-495x760.jpg"></div>  </figure> <figure class="isotope-item ratio-container--gallery photo" data-category="photo" data-ratio="1.25" title="" data-gtm-category="photo" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Achiever - ">   <div class="lazyload ratio-container__image" data-toggle="modal" data-target="#imageModal" data-image-src="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/main_1-James-Earl-Jones-Signed-Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-8x10-Photo-PSA-COA-PristineAuction.com_.jpg" data-image-caption="James Earl Jones is known for his voice roles as Darth Vader in the <i>Star Wars</i> film series and Mufasa in Disney's <i>The Lion King</i>." data-image-copyright="main_1-james-earl-jones-signed-star-wars-darth-vader-8x10-photo-psa-coa-pristineauction-com" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/main_1-James-Earl-Jones-Signed-Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-8x10-Photo-PSA-COA-PristineAuction.com_-304x380.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/12/main_1-James-Earl-Jones-Signed-Star-Wars-Darth-Vader-8x10-Photo-PSA-COA-PristineAuction.com_-608x760.jpg"></div>  </figure>    </div> </section> </div> </div> <div class="container"> <footer class="editorial-article__footer col-md-8 col-md-offset-4"> <div class="editorial-article__next-link sans-3"> <a href="#"><strong>What's next:</strong> <span class="editorial-article__next-link-title">profile</span></a> </div> <ul class="social list-unstyled list-inline ssk-group m-b-0"> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-facebook" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Facebook"><i class="icon-icon_facebook-circle"></i></a></li> <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-twitter" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever on Twitter"><i class="icon-icon_twitter-circle"></i></a></li>  <li class="list-inline-item"><a href="" class="ssk ssk-email" data-gtm-category="social" data-gtm-action="click" data-gtm-label="Shared Achiever via Email"><i class="icon-icon_email-circle"></i></a></li> </ul> <time class="editorial-article__last-updated sans-6">This page last revised on August 14, 2018</time> <div class="sans-4"><a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/how-to-cite" target="_blank">How to cite this page</a></div> </footer> </div> <div class="container interview-related-achievers"> <hr class="m-t-3 m-b-3"/> <footer class="clearfix small-blocks text-xs-center"> <h3 class="m-b-3 serif-3">If you are inspired by this achiever’s story, you might also enjoy:</h3> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever writer the-arts imprisonment-persecution build-or-create-things explore-the-world write " data-year-inducted="2014" data-achiever-name="Fugard"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/760-fugard-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/03/760-fugard-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Athol Fugard</div> <div class="achiever-block__known-as text-white sans-6">Novelist and Playwright</div> </div> </div> </div> <div class="text-white achiever-block__text--bottom"> <div class="achiever-block__year sans-4">Inducted in <span class="year-inducted">2014</span></div> </div> </figcaption> </figure> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="centered-blocks"> <div class="isotope-achiever the-arts racism-discrimination small-town-rural-upbringing curious write " data-year-inducted="2001" data-achiever-name="Gaines"> <div class="achiever-block view-grid"> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"> <figure class="ratio-container ratio-container--square bg-black"> <div class="lazyload box achiever-block__image" data-sizes="auto" data-bgset="/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/gaines-007a-190x190.jpg [(max-width:576px)] | /wp-content/uploads/2016/05/gaines-007a-380x380.jpg"></div> <div class="achiever-block__overlay"></div> <figcaption class="text-xs-center achiever-block__text"> <div class="display--table"> <div class="display--table-cell"> <div class="achiever-block__text--center"> <div class="achiever-block__name text-brand-primary">Ernest J. 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Carson, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-carter/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Carter</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-cash/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Cash</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-j-clinton/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William J. Clinton</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-s-collins/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis S. Collins, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/denton-a-cooley/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Denton A. Cooley, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/francis-ford-coppola/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Francis Ford Coppola</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-dalio/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Dalio</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/olivia-de-havilland/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Olivia de Havilland</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-e-debakey-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael E. DeBakey, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/michael-dell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Michael S. Dell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-dennis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Dennis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joan-didion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joan Didion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-herbert-donald-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David Herbert Donald, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rita-dove/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rita Dove</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sylvia-earle/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sylvia Earle, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/elbaradei/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mohamed ElBaradei</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/gertrude-elion/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Gertrude B. Elion, M.Sc.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-j-ellison/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry J. Ellison</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nora-ephron/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nora Ephron</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/julius-erving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Julius Erving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tony-fadell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Tony Fadell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-farmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Farmer, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzanne-farrell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzanne Farrell</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-field/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally Field</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-norman-foster/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Norman Foster</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/milton-friedman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Milton Friedman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-fuentes/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Fuentes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/athol-fugard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Athol Fugard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernest-j-gaines/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernest J. Gaines</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/william-h-gates-iii/"><span class="achiever-list-name">William H. Gates III</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-gehry/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank O. Gehry</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/murray-gell-mann-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Murray Gell-Mann, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carlos-ghosn/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carlos Ghosn</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/vince-gill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Vince Gill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ruth-bader-ginsburg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ruth Bader Ginsburg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louise-gluck/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louise Glück</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/whoopi-goldberg/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Whoopi Goldberg</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jane-goodall/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dame Jane Goodall</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/doris-kearns-goodwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Doris Kearns Goodwin, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mikhail-s-gorbachev/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mikhail S. Gorbachev</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nadine-gordimer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nadine Gordimer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/stephen-jay-gould/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Stephen Jay Gould, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carol-greider-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carol Greider, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-grisham/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Grisham</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dorothy-hamill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dorothy Hamill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/demis-hassabis-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Demis Hassabis, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lauryn-hill/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lauryn Hill</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-edmund-hillary/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Edmund Hillary</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/reid-hoffman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Reid Hoffman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/khaled-hosseini/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Khaled Hosseini, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ron-howard/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ron Howard</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-hume/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Hume</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/louis-ignarro-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Louis Ignarro, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/daniel-inouye/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Daniel K. Inouye</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jeremy-irons/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jeremy Irons</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-irving/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John Irving</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/kazuo-ishiguro/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Kazuo Ishiguro</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sir-peter-jackson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sir Peter Jackson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/donald-c-johanson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Donald C. Johanson, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-m-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank M. Johnson, Jr.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/philip-johnson/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Philip C. Johnson</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/chuck-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Chuck Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-earl-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James Earl Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/quincy-jones/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Quincy Jones</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/beverly-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Beverly Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/dereck-joubert/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Dereck Joubert</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/paul-kagame/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Paul Kagame</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/thomas-keller-2/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Thomas Keller</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/anthony-m-kennedy/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Anthony M. Kennedy</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/b-b-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">B.B. King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/carole-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Carole King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/coretta-scott-king/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Coretta Scott King</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-kissinger-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry A. Kissinger, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willem-j-kolff/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willem J. Kolff, M.D., Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wendy-kopp/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wendy Kopp</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/henry-r-kravis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Henry R. Kravis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/nicholas-d-kristof/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Nicholas D. Kristof</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mike-krzyzewski/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mike Krzyzewski</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ray-kurzwell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ray Kurzweil</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/eric-lander-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Eric S. Lander, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-s-langer-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert S. Langer, Sc.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/richard-leakey/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Richard E. Leakey</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-lederman-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Lederman, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/robert-lefkowitz-m-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Robert J. Lefkowitz, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/congressman-john-r-lewis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Congressman John R. Lewis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/maya-lin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Maya Lin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/george-lucas/"><span class="achiever-list-name">George Lucas</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/norman-mailer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Norman Mailer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peyton-manning/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peyton Manning</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/wynton-marsalis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Wynton Marsalis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/john-c-mather-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">John C. Mather, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/johnny-mathis/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Johnny Mathis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ernst-mayr-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/willie-mays/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Willie Mays</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/frank-mccourt/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Frank McCourt</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/david-mccullough/"><span class="achiever-list-name">David McCullough</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/audra-mcdonald/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Audra McDonald</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/admiral-william-h-mcraven/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Admiral William H. McRaven, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/w-s-merwin/"><span class="achiever-list-name">W. S. Merwin</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/james-a-michener/"><span class="achiever-list-name">James A. Michener</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/marvin-minsky-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Marvin Minsky, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/mario-j-molina-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Mario J. Molina, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/n-scott-momaday-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">N. Scott Momaday, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/story-musgrave/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Story Musgrave, M.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/ralph-nader/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Ralph Nader</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/peggy-noonan/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Peggy Noonan</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jessye-norman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jessye Norman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/tommy-norris/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lt. Thomas R. Norris, USN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/joyce-carol-oates/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Joyce Carol Oates</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/pierre-omidyar/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Pierre Omidyar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/jimmy-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Jimmy Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/larry-page/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Larry Page</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/arnold-palmer/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Arnold Palmer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/leon-panetta/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Leon Panetta</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/rosa-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Rosa Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/suzan-lori-parks/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Suzan-Lori Parks</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/linus-pauling/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Linus C. Pauling, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/shimon-peres/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Shimon Peres</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/itzhak-perlman/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Itzhak Perlman</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-david-petraeus/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General David H. Petraeus, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sidney-poitier/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sidney Poitier</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/general-colin-l-powell/"><span class="achiever-list-name">General Colin L. Powell, USA</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/harold-prince/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Harold Prince</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/venki-ramakrishnan-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Venki Ramakrishnan, Ph.D.</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lord-martin-rees/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lord Martin Rees</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/lloyd-richards/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Lloyd Richards</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/web/20180912023845/http://www.achievement.org/achiever/sally-ride-ph-d/"><span class="achiever-list-name">Sally K. 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