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“Star Wars” creator George Lucas recalled this week that he had two actors in mind for the voice of Darth Vader when he created the ’70s sensation — James Earl Jones and Orson Welles.

“I created a villain . . . I knew the voice had to be very, very special,” Lucas said at the American Theatre Wing Gala to honor Jones on Monday. “And I had to make a choice — a choice that was a tough choice, but an easy choice, really — between Orson Welles and James Earl Jones . . . [Jones] won hands down.”

Jones has previously said: “I understand that George did contact Orson Welles to read for the voice of Darth Vader before he contacted me. I was out of work, and he said, ‘Do you want a day’s work?’”

Also at the gala, Samuel L. Jackson recalled a brush with Jones at an audition for the 1981 movie “Ragtime,” before Jackson even had an agent.

“Unfortunately, you didn’t get that role! Moses Gunn did,” Jackson said to Jones to laughs from a crowd including Angela Lansbury, Cicely Tyson and Magic Johnson. “I gotta say, that was an invaluable lesson for me.”

When Jones, 84, who studied acting at the American Theatre Wing Professional School, took the stage he exclaimed, “I am so . . . old! . . . I must salute the ghosts of all the beloved teachers I had when I started in 1955.”

The star of “The Lion King” was saluted in song by actors who played his role in the stage version of the Disney blockbuster. Also there: Mellody Hobson, William Ivey Long, Daryl Roth, Jordan Roth and Richie Jackson.