James Earl Jones, iconic voice of Darth Vader and Mufasa, dies at 93
Jones, who had been suffering from diabetes for a long time, died at his home surrounded by family members, his agent Barry McPherson said.
James Earl Jones, the American actor with a commanding presence on stage and screen who overcame a childhood stutter to develop a powerful voice known worldwide as the space villain Darth Vader, died on Monday at the age of 93.
Jones, who had been suffering from diabetes for a long time, died at his home surrounded by family members, his agent Barry McPherson said.
No cause of death was given.
Jones had an imposing physical presence on stage and television as well as in films, but he would have been a star even if his face had never been seen because his voice had a career of its own. The resonant voice could command instant respect — as in the wise father Mufasa in “The Lion King” and in several Shakespearean roles — or instill fear, as in the gruff Vader in the “Star Wars” films.
Jones laughed when a BBC interviewer asked him if he resented being so associated with Darth Vader, a role that only required his voice for a few lines while another actor performed on-screen in costume.
“I love being a part of that whole myth, that whole cult,” he said, adding that he’s happy to help fans who have asked him to speak his “I am your father” line to Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill.
“#RIP Dad,” Hamill wrote on X on Monday following news of Jones’ death, along with a broken heart emoji.
Jones said he never made much money playing Darth Vader – just $9,000 for the first film – and considered it just special effects work. He also didn’t ask to be included in the credits of the first two “Star Wars” films.
His long list of awards includes Tony Awards for “The Great White Hope” in 1969 and “Fences” in 1987 on Broadway, and Emmy Awards for “Gabriel’s Fire” and “Heat Wave” on television in 1991. He also won a Grammy in 1977 for best spoken word album, “Great American Documents.”
Although he never won a competitive Academy Award, he was nominated for best actor for the film version of “The Great White Hope” and was given an honorary Oscar in 2011.
He began his film career playing Lt. Luther Zog in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 classic “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”
Later acclaimed film roles included novelist Terrence Mann in 1989’s “Field of Dreams” and South African Reverend Stephen Kumalo in 1995’s “Cry, the Beloved Country”. He also starred in such films as “Conan the Barbarian”, “Coming to America”, “The Sandlot”, “Matewan”, “The Hunt for Red October” and “Field of Dreams”.
Jones was also heard in dozens of television commercials, and for many years CNN used his official “This is CNN” catchphrase to begin its newscasts.
Separated from father
James Earl Jones was born on January 17, 1931, in the small community of Arkabutla, Mississippi, to a family with a mixed ethnic background of Irish, African, and Cherokee.
His father, award-winning actor Robert Earl Jones, left the family shortly after. James was raised by his maternal grandparents, who forbade him from seeing his father, and the two did not live together until James moved to New York in the 1950s. Eventually they appeared in several plays together.
Jones was about 5 when his grandparents moved the family from Mississippi to a farm in Michigan, and it was around this time that he began to stutter and stopped speaking.
He remained silent for a decade, but a ploy by his high school English teacher forced him to speak out. The teacher asked Jones to recite a poem in class, which he said he had written, to prove he was familiar enough with the poem to be its author.
Although he said he still had to choose his words carefully, Jones learned to control his stutter and became more interested in acting.
After studying drama at the University of Michigan, he moved to New York, where his theatre performances attracted critical attention and praise.
His breakthrough role on Broadway was “The Great White Hope,” in which he played a character based on black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. The play examined racism from the perspective of the boxing world, and critics praised Jones’ performance.
A popular theater attraction for decades, his major Shakespeare roles included Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello. He also notably played singer-actor-activist Paul Robeson on Broadway in 1977 and author Alex Haley in the television mini-series “Roots: The Next Generation.”
“He was able to go from childlike innocence to biblical anger in a matter of seconds and somehow suggest all the permutations in between,” The Washington Post wrote in a 1987 review of “Fences.”
Jones’ first wife was Julianne Marie Hendrix, one of his “Othello” co-stars. Earl and his second wife, actress Cecilia Hart, who died in 2016, had one child, Flynn Earl Jones.
