In March of 1977, Star Wars was an unknown movie, simply a script about outer space with a low budget. Darth Vader was to be the villain in the movie, but the actor’s voice was deemed unfitting for what George Lucas had in mind. He wanted a deeper, more gruff voice. When James Earl Jones was brought in to record voiceover tracks for Darth Vader, he was offered a percentage of the profits for the film, instead of the traditional salary given to actors. Like everyone else, including the studio producing the movie, Jones was skeptical about the movie’s potential and thought it would be a flop. He opted to take the salary and earned a mere $7,000 for his voice work, the equivalent of $27,000 today. That was a large amount of money for a struggling actor at the time. Star Wars went on to be not only a successful film, but an iconic series. Sir Alec Guinness, who played Obi Wan-Kenobi, accepted the offer of equity, which turned out to be an estimated $95 million.
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