Stage and screen titan James Earl Jones, whose booming voice resonated as Mufasa in “The Lion King,” Darth Vader in “Star Wars” and a host of Hollywood and Broadway classics, died on Monday.
He was 93.
Jones’ death was confirmed by his agent, Barry McPherson, who said the actor died at his home in Dutchess County. The cause was not immediately clear.
Jones filled the screen with his size and presence, whether he was boxing shirtless in “The Great White Hope” or holding court as an African king in “Coming to America.” Jones has been described as an actor, a thespian, a comedian and a star. But Jones has said that he considered himself first and foremost a storyteller.
“The need to storytell has always been with us,” he told The Associated Press in 2015, during his appearance on Broadway with fellow legend Cicely Tyson in “The Gin Game.”
“I think it first happened around campfires when the man came home and told his family he got the bear, the bear didn’t get him.”
Jones was a bear of a man himself. At 6-foot-2 and more than 200 pounds, he was just the right size to play a Jack Johnson-like boxer in the 1970 film, “The Great White Hope.”
His performance earned him an Academy Award nomination. Jones had originated the role on Broadway, where he won a Tony Award for his performance.
Jones won another Tony starring in “Fences,” in 1987. He was also nominated for his work in 2005’s “On Golden Pond” and “The Best Man” in 2012.
In 1991, Jones won two Emmys, one for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series (“Gabriel Bird”) and the other for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or Special (“Junius Jackson”). He was nominated for six others, beginning in 1964 with an Outstanding Actor nomination for 1964’s “East Side/West Side,” and ending in 2004, with a nomination for his guest work in “Everwood.”
In 2001, he earned a Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album for Children (“The Christmas Miracle Of Jonathan Toomey”).
Jones was as versatile as he was talented. He was writer Alex Haley in “Roots: The Next Generation,” a South African minister in “Cry, the Beloved Country,” a garbageman in “Claudine” and a CIA chief in the spy thriller “Clear and Present Danger.”
But Jones’ most memorable movie line may have been the one he uttered to a shocked Luke Skywalker in the sci-fi classic “The Empire Strikes Back,” as the voice of villain Darth Vader: “No, I am your father.”
His voice also gave credence to a cable news upstart.
“This is CNN,” Jones said during station breaks.
As much as Jones was celebrated as a pioneering African American actor, he was actually a second-generation performer.
Jones’ father, Robert Earl Jones, was a living link to the Harlem Renaissance, and lived and worked long enough to earn credits in films such as “The Sting” (1973), “Trading Places” (1983), “The Cotton Club” (1984), and “Witness” (1985).
James Earl Jones was born Jan. 17, 1931 by the light of an oil lamp in a shack in Arkabutla, Miss. His father had deserted his mother before he was born to pursue life as a boxer and, later, an actor.
When Jones was 6, his mother took him to her parents’ farm near Manistee, Mich. His grandparents adopted the boy and raised him.
As a child, he developed a stutter so severe that he refused to speak.
“I couldn’t talk,” he once told an interviewer. “So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.”
A sympathetic teacher learned that Jones wrote poetry, and urged him to read one of his poems aloud in class. Soon he was speaking normally— and regularly.
“I could not get enough of speaking, debating, orating — acting,” he recalled in his autobiography, “Voices and Silences.” Jones had not appeared in public for some time, even skipping the opening of the Broadway theater renamed for him in 2022, though he did reflect on the honor in a statement to the Daily News at the time.
“For me, standing in this very building 64 years ago at the start of my Broadway career, it would have been inconceivable that my name would be on the building today,” said Jones, who made his Broadway debut in a 1958 production of “Sunrise at Campobello” at the Cort Theatre.
“Let my journey from then to now be an inspiration for all inspiring actors.”
Jones is survived by his son, Flynn Earl Jones.
With News Wire Services
