*James Earl Jones was reportedly paid $7,000 to voice Darth Vader in the first “Star Wars” film.
Jones explained in a resurfaced clip from the American Film Institute that director George Lucas cast him to voice Darth Vader, a character actually played by the late David Prowse.
“George wanted, pardon the expression, a dark voice,” Jones said in the clip. “So he hires a guy born in Mississippi, raised in Michigan, who stutters. And that’s the voice. That’s me.”
Jones also admitted that he was quite excited about his $7000 paycheck.
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“I lucked out, from all these so-called handicaps, for a job that paid $7,000! I thought that was good money,” Jones told AFI. “And I got to be a voice on a movie!”
Jones also revealed that he and Lucas disagreed on how Darth Vader should sound in the film’s sequel, “The Empire Strikes Back.”
“He said, ‘We don’t know what we did right, so let’s just try what we did … What we’re finding out is you need to keep his voice on a very narrow band of inflection because he ain’t human, really,’” Jones recalled of Lucas.
We previously reported that Jones returned to the franchise for “Star Wars: Rogue One.”
Watch the clip below of him talking about being cast as the voice of Darth Vader.
