James Earl Jones is one of the most celebrated Black actors in the entertainment business, yet few are aware he has had a stuttering problem since childhood. Despite the problem, his powerful voice can be heard during station breaks on CNN, as the evil Darth Vader in the Star Wars film trilogy and as King Mufasa in The Lion King. Stuttering is a speech disorder in which a person repeats sounds or syllables with prolonged sounds or hesitations. Singing and reading have been ways to help a stutterer speak with fluency. In public speaking, the scripted page has often been considered a stutterer's salvation and for Jones it became just that. "You keep the stuttering under control because you have a script," he explained in Parade Magazine. "In real life, I just try to get through the day or through the conversation. I'm not good in talk-show interviews. I will think of something that might be brilliant to say, and I can't get it worded," Jones revealed. In A Family Thing, Jones, most recent film, he, for the first time, portrays a character who stutters (JET, April 1). According to Jones, during one of the first readings of the script, his stuttering slipped out and the film's director, Richard Pearce, suggested that it be a part of his character's vulnerability.
