James Earl Jones on Whether He’s Pretended to Be Darth Vader on the Phone

The actor recounts a brief anecdote about using “Darth as my handle on the CB radio” while traveling.

“I did that once when I was traveling cross-country. I used Darth as my handle on the CB radio. The truck drivers would really freak out — for them, it was Darth Vader. I had to stop doing that,” Jones told the Times magazine.

The mag also asked the actor when he realized his voice would become a “cash machine” His response? “I didn’t want it to be. You know, I don’t hear the voice you hear. I’m not party to the Darth Vader tone. All I’m doing is using the voice I have to try to be as clear as I can with the language I’m using.”

Ironically, for his original Star Wars role Jones was only paid $7,000 for voiceover work. “[W]e did it in two-and-a-half hours,” Jones told THR in 2011. “I got paid seven thousand dollars for it. Nobody at that time knew that it would become a cult hit … I’m very happy to be a part of that cult, even though I didn’t get paid a lot for it.”