January 17: Happy Birthday James Earl Jones

https://lebeauleblog.com/2017/01/17/january-17-happy-birthday-james-earl-jones-and-jim-carrey/

James Earl Jones celebrates his 86th today. He entered acting after his early 1950s Army service, working as a janitor to pay the bills until he got steady work. He made his Broadway debut in 1958 in Dore Schary’s Sunrise at Campobello. His feature film debut followed in 1964 in a small role in Dr. Strangelove.

In 1968 Jones starred on Broadway as the lead in Howard Sackler’s play The Great White Hope, based loosely on the life of boxer Jack Johnson, the first African American to win the world heavyweight title (renamed Jack Jefferson in the play). Two years later, Jones reprised the role in a film adaptation. He won a Tony for the stage role and won a Golden Globe and receive an Oscar nomination for the film:

Jones won a second Tony for starring in the original Broadway production of August Wilson’s Fences (and has been nominated two additional times). He has been nominated for nine Emmys (eight Primetime, one Daytime), winning three, two of them in 1990—one for the TV movie Heat Wave, the other as the lead in the short-lived series Gabriel’s Fire. He has, of course, done a great deal of film work, including co-starring in Field of Dreams and playing Admiral James Greer in three adaptations of Tom Clancy’s novels. His best-known film performances have, most likely, been a pair of voice roles, as Mufasa in The Lion King and Darth Vader in the Star Wars trilogy.