Why Did James Earl Jones Retire From Star Wars?

At 20, I became known for two things. First, I weighed over 200 pounds, yet I still ended up dating Christian Fairmont, the coldest and most unattainable man in our circle. Second, I turned down Christian's proposal, changed my name, left the country, and became the one woman no one dared mention around him—the forbidden, unattainable love he could never let go. For the next five years, Christian shut himself away in a church and refused to see anyone. Just when everyone thought he was about to become a priest, he suddenly announced his engagement. He made such a spectacle of it that even I heard about it all the way in Goldridge. That alone showed how much he valued his bride-to-be. I booked the first flight home that same night. Everyone who saw me reacted the same way. First, they stared at how completely I had changed, how much weight I had lost, how I looked like a different person. Then they sighed. "Juliana, you came back too late." Even Christian looked at me with cold, distant eyes. "When you walked away and left me behind, did you ever think that five years later, you'd regret it?" Regret? I shook my head. "I don't regret it." I was already married and had a child.

After five years in a marriage without intimacy, I finally called my wife, Suzanna Jones, the youngest commander in the military, and asked her to spend the night with me. Five hundred and twenty times. That was how many times we had been interrupted over the years. Every time we came close to being together, an urgent call from her widowed brother‑in‑law, Eric Gibson, pulled her away before anything could happen. Then, on our wedding anniversary, Suzanna promised she would finally give me the perfect wedding night we never had. I held her by the waist and was about to cross the final line between us when Eric’s ringtone shattered the moment. “Suzanna… I was injured in an explosion down there. What if I am crippled for life…?” Panic filled her face. She pushed me aside and rushed for the door. I grabbed her wrist and tried to stop her. “Send him to the military hospital first.” She turned on me with anger and slapped me across the face. “Shane! Eric is seriously hurt! How can you be this heartless?” She pulled on her dress and ran out. When I caught up with her, the sight in front of me stopped me cold. The woman who once promised to give me her first night was wrapped around Eric in a position far more intimate than anything she had ever shared with me. When I asked for an explanation, she looked calm and unbothered. “Eric is in critical condition. Was I supposed to stand there and do nothing? It is not that important. If it bothers you that much, I can fix it later.” Something inside me went numb. For five years, I had been the only one trying to hold our marriage together. At that moment, I realized I was exhausted from fighting for something that had ended long ago.

For eight years, I was James Carter's secretary and secret lover. Eight years of giving him my heart completely. I truly believed he loved me back - he was always tender and attentive when we were intimate, seemingly caring about my every need and desire. But then I overheard him telling others, "She's nothing but a stand-in, just someone to satisfy my physical needs when I'm bored. Did you really think I would marry her?" In that moment, I finally found the strength to let go and stop loving him. I handed in my resignation and walked away from it all. Yet after my whirlwind marriage to someone else, why did he suddenly start searching for me desperately across the city? Now he's here with tears in his eyes, claiming I'm the one he truly loves? Wasn't I just his convenient replacement all along?

After six years of working as a corpse porter, I finally saved enough money to treat my sister, Maeve Xander, for her liver cancer. Maeve, however, casually refused the surgery. “I’m not actually sick. Mom and Dad aren’t dead either. I staged that car accident. You’re the only one who ended up seriously hurt and disabled.” Then my wife, Laurel Jinks, also confessed, “I’m not bankrupt. Every time I said I had to work late, it was because I didn’t want to cram into that filthy basement with you. I was going back to my mansion. I originally planned to punish you for three more years, but you reek of dead bodies. Maeve and I just can’t take the smell anymore.” A wave of pure absurdity washed over me as my body froze with the hand holding my credit card still in the air. Maeve snatched the card from my hand and tossed it into the trash. “That card is empty. I gave all the money you made carrying corpses to homeless people. Think of it as doing good deeds for the child you lost. After all, taking money from the dead is cursed. It’s bad luck all the way down. We shouldn’t touch that filthy money.” A chill ran down my spine. I did not understand why they treated me this way. Then, I saw my parents. They were standing far away from me, as if I were a plague. I completely broke down. “You bullied Cameron because you are the only son of the Xander family, so we wanted to teach you a lesson. If you promise to never bully Cameron again, we’ll still consider you our son. If you do not promise, we’ll cut you off, and you’ll be dead to us.” Just as my heart sank and I fell into despair, a sympathetic voice from the system sounded in my mind. [Jude, do you wish to abandon this mission and leave this world?]

For our ninety-ninth engagement ceremony, Julian booked us a skydive. He said he wanted to tell me he loved me at thirty thousand feet. My chute didn't open. I got tangled in a big tree. I survived, yet suffered multiple fractures all over my body. In the ward, I accidentally saw a message on the screen of our jump instructor's phone. It was addressed to Julian, and it carried a video. The video showed someone tampering with my chute before we boarded. So the "accident" was Julian's idea? I dragged myself out of bed on crutches, every bone in my body screaming, ready to confront him. I made it as far as the hallway. He was already there, talking to someone, and the moment I saw the other man, the floor tilted under me. The man across from him was the same driver who'd hit me with his car the night before our last engagement. The hit-and-run that should have killed me. "Mr. Veil, if you ever need me again, please reach out." Julian's voice was flat, almost tired. "There won't be a next time. I've tried everything I can think of. The engagement can't be postponed anymore." "And the woman you actually love, sir?" "I'll keep loving her," Julian said. "But Ada is the one I marry. Her mother gave my father a kidney. That's the debt. I have to pay it." I stood there shaking, and the truth rearranged itself behind my eyes. The camping trip he had planned, where I got lost and nearly died of hypothermia in the woods. That had been him. The vitamin C he had handed me, the one that put me in the ICU. Him too. And this time — the skydive, thirty thousand feet, “I want the sky to witness our love”. All of it. Every single one of those accidents was him trying to delay the wedding. But Julian, I thought, I could save you the trouble. The next morning I accepted an offer that had been sitting in my inbox for weeks: an invitation from a world-class orchestra on the other side of the planet.

I'd been married to my vampire husband for three years, and he had always cherished me like a treasure. He held me close every night before I went to sleep. He never let go of my hand when we went out. He worried, always, that I might get hurt. A common cold was enough to make him cancel everything and stay up all night beside me. James told me no one in the world mattered more to him than I did. Everyone said he loved me to pieces. I believed it too. Until the day of the ceremony — the night he was supposed to turn me into a vampire. A woman who should have been dead walked back into his life. She had my face, tear-streaked, calling his name in a small voice. That was when I understood. I'd only ever been the stand-in for the woman he couldn't let go of. My stubbornness, my refusal to give up — all of it broke under the disappointment that kept piling up. So I gave up on him for good. I decided to keep our child to myself, and disappear from his world without a word. But later, he came back. Down on his knees, again and again, begging me to come home.