Keeping up with Jones
Legendary voice back as Darth Vader in next episode of Star Wars
In the words of Darth Vader, "The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master."
So it was that Vader's voice, James Earl Jones -- a sharecropper's son and the first of his family to go to college -- was honoured last night by ORT Toronto, the local arm of a group that funds education and mentoring projects worldwide.
The starry guest list included Christopher Plummer and Pamela Wallin.
"I have my own reasons for being interested in kids education," Jones told The Sun in an interview prior to the event.
"I came from Mississippi, where my dad had a third-grade education and that sustained him through his life. My mom was educated through the sixth grade, before she had to stop and go back and teach first graders. At that time there weren't many high schools for black kids in the state."
His family broke up, and Jones moved with his grandparents to Michigan. "My granddad -- I can still hear him say it, 'I'm gonna move up North so the chilluns can have a better education,' " Jones says with a hearty laugh. "It was his mantra."
Jones was indeed a pioneer, but not the way his grandfather intended. The actor -- who'd overcome a severe stuttering problem by doing stage work in high school -- eventually gave up his pre-med studies at the University Of Michigan to follow a dramatic dream.
"It was like force-feeding a goose," he says of his courses, "my mind being the goose and the food being all this data."
No argument with his career choice now. Apart from having the world's most famous voice (repeat after me, "This... is CNN"), he has plaudits up to his chin, two Tony Awards and an Oscar nomination, for the movie version of his stage tour de force The Great White Hope.
OSCARS IRRELEVANT
Yes, he's one of that handful of black actors who'd been nominated in the decades before Halle and Denzel broke through last year. And he says not to expect a black actor to even be nominated this year.
"I try to tell black people that. The Oscars are not about society. They're about art hopefully, and certainly popularity. It's irrelevant really. I love trophies, and the Oscar is a great trophy, and I would love one. But I'm not going to cry if I don't get one.
"You get awarded for sweet things; there are a lot of old people in Hollywood who are used to Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. They don't want bitter or scary, and they don't feel safe with a movie about Hurricane Carter." Graciously, he doesn't include himself in any list of black actors who were jobbed out of an Oscar. "We screwed that movie up by ignoring the playwright's impulses, which were poetic," he says referring to The Great White Hope, the movie of his Tony-winning tour de force. "It was not an Oscar-winning movie. We threw out every aspect of poetry and made it in (playwright) Larry Turner's mind, a drama about a black guy and a white girl."
As for Star Wars, he really is coming full circle as Vader. Plans are to return him as the voice of Vader in part three of the new Star Wars trilogy, which currently has a release date of 2005. "George Lucas says 'When Anakin goes bionic -- that will be in the last five minutes of episode three -- they will hear you."
He gives his seal of approval to Hayden Christensen, the current Anakin Skywalker and the man who will be Vader. "Aren't you impressed with him?" he says. "I like his whole bearing, the spine, the neck ... he's like a snake."
Not that he feels at all proprietary about who plays Darth. "No," he laughs, "the little kid (The Phantom Menace's Jake Lloyd) got me over that."
Legendary voice back as Darth Vader in next episode of Star Wars
In the words of Darth Vader, "The circle is now complete. When I left you, I was but the learner. Now I am the master."
So it was that Vader's voice, James Earl Jones -- a sharecropper's son and the first of his family to go to college -- was honoured last night by ORT Toronto, the local arm of a group that funds education and mentoring projects worldwide.
The starry guest list included Christopher Plummer and Pamela Wallin.
"I have my own reasons for being interested in kids education," Jones told The Sun in an interview prior to the event.
"I came from Mississippi, where my dad had a third-grade education and that sustained him through his life. My mom was educated through the sixth grade, before she had to stop and go back and teach first graders. At that time there weren't many high schools for black kids in the state."
His family broke up, and Jones moved with his grandparents to Michigan. "My granddad -- I can still hear him say it, 'I'm gonna move up North so the chilluns can have a better education,' " Jones says with a hearty laugh. "It was his mantra."
Jones was indeed a pioneer, but not the way his grandfather intended. The actor -- who'd overcome a severe stuttering problem by doing stage work in high school -- eventually gave up his pre-med studies at the University Of Michigan to follow a dramatic dream.
"It was like force-feeding a goose," he says of his courses, "my mind being the goose and the food being all this data."
No argument with his career choice now. Apart from having the world's most famous voice (repeat after me, "This... is CNN"), he has plaudits up to his chin, two Tony Awards and an Oscar nomination, for the movie version of his stage tour de force The Great White Hope.
OSCARS IRRELEVANT
Yes, he's one of that handful of black actors who'd been nominated in the decades before Halle and Denzel broke through last year. And he says not to expect a black actor to even be nominated this year.
"I try to tell black people that. The Oscars are not about society. They're about art hopefully, and certainly popularity. It's irrelevant really. I love trophies, and the Oscar is a great trophy, and I would love one. But I'm not going to cry if I don't get one.
"You get awarded for sweet things; there are a lot of old people in Hollywood who are used to Fred Astaire or Ginger Rogers. They don't want bitter or scary, and they don't feel safe with a movie about Hurricane Carter." Graciously, he doesn't include himself in any list of black actors who were jobbed out of an Oscar. "We screwed that movie up by ignoring the playwright's impulses, which were poetic," he says referring to The Great White Hope, the movie of his Tony-winning tour de force. "It was not an Oscar-winning movie. We threw out every aspect of poetry and made it in (playwright) Larry Turner's mind, a drama about a black guy and a white girl."
As for Star Wars, he really is coming full circle as Vader. Plans are to return him as the voice of Vader in part three of the new Star Wars trilogy, which currently has a release date of 2005. "George Lucas says 'When Anakin goes bionic -- that will be in the last five minutes of episode three -- they will hear you."
He gives his seal of approval to Hayden Christensen, the current Anakin Skywalker and the man who will be Vader. "Aren't you impressed with him?" he says. "I like his whole bearing, the spine, the neck ... he's like a snake."
Not that he feels at all proprietary about who plays Darth. "No," he laughs, "the little kid (The Phantom Menace's Jake Lloyd) got me over that."
