A Lifetime of Achievement, but James Earl Jones Isn't Done

Jan. 25, 2009— -- The unmistakable voice on the phone sounds congenial enough. Even more so after James Earl Jones is congratulated on being this year's recipient of the Screen Actors Guild's highest honor. He'll be presented with a lifetime achievement award on the broadcast Sunday night at 8 ET/PT on TNT and TBS. Jones, 78, reflects on over a half-century in showbiz with USA Today.

Q: Have you written a speech yet?

Jones: Just a thank-you to tell them how I like their work. When I surf the cable shows and see a certain movie, I often think, "I'm glad I had a chance to catch that." The work moves me.

Q: You have said in the past that you feel most at home on a stage, rather than in movies or on TV. Is that still true?

Jones: Absolutely. I consider myself a novice film actor. I still have a lot to learn. On stage, that is how my training started. That is where I felt most fulfilled so far. I still want to do more film. I didn't know how to take it, frankly, when Alan (Rosenberg, the president of SAG) called me and told me about the award. I just laughed. After my wife said something, I called him back and I told him I wasn't dismissing it. I just didn't know why, except that I am 78 years old. And that is no reason to receive it.

Q: Your only Oscar nomination was for repeating your stage role of the boxer based on real-life fighter Jack Johnson in the film version of "The Great White Hope." What did that mean to you?

Jones: I knew George C. Scott would win that year for "Patton." His film was more fulfilled. Our file was truncated from what we achieved onstage. They did away with a lot of the poetic elements. It was too large a life form to work on. Martin Ritt was a wonderful director, but he was better with smaller-scope social stories, like "Norma Rae." But I am glad we got what we did on tape.

Q: As the voice of Mufasa, Simba's caring father in the 1994 animated feature "The Lion King," your death had almost as much impact as the shooting of Bambi's mother some 50 years earlier.