Legendary actor James Earl Jones, best known for his innumerable movie roles and the booming voice of the character of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” franchise, has died, his representative confirmed to ABC News.
He was 93 years old.
Jones died on Monday morning at his home in Dutchess County, New York, surrounded by his family, according to longtime agent Barry McPherson.
The thespian, whose powerful, deep voice brought to life the iconic villain of Darth Vader, acted for more than six decades and won three Tony Awards, including a lifetime honor in 2017, two Emmys and a Grammy. He was recognized for lifetime achievement by the Academy Awards in 2011.
Jones was born in 1931 in Mississippi and famously battled a severe stutter as a child.
“People would come to the house and there’d be introductions made and I couldn’t introduce myself,” he told PBS in 2014 of just how bad the affliction was back then. Jones said he learned to stayed silent for long stretches at a time.
“I found it was, oh, so good sometimes because silence isn’t bad. It’s good to listen. And I learned to listen,” Jones told PBS.
James Earl Jones as Paul Robeson, with his bust, at Her Majesty’s Theatre in London, in 1978.
Hulton-Deutsch Collection/Corbis via Getty Images
It was the stutter that led Jones into acting after a high school teacher used poetry to help him speak more clearly. After college and then the Army, serving in the Korean War, Jones eyed Broadway for his start in theater and the arts.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Jones was a Broadway staple. From “On Golden Pond” to “The Best Man,” his work earned four Tony nominations, winning for “The Great White Hope” in 1969 and “Fences” in 1987.
Almost simultaneously, he was garnering acclaim on TV as well. The eventual two-time Emmy Award winner earned his first nod in the 1960s for his work on “East Side/West Side.”
He picked up both his Primetime Emmy wins in 1991, for best supporting actor in the miniseries “Heat Wave” and best actor for the series “Gabriel’s Fire.” He also won a Daytime Emmy for the children’s special “Summer’s End” in 2000.
Darth Vader in a scene from “Star Wars” in 1977.
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Jones later earned his first Oscar nod, adapting “The Great White Hope” to the silver screen in 1970, playing boxer Jack Jefferson. Jones was just the second Black actor after Sidney Poitier — who was nominated in 1958 and 1963 — to be recognized by the academy with a nomination.
For the better part of the 1970s, Jones continued to juggle his work on stage, TV and film. Then, in 1977, he was cast as the voice of a new villain, Darth Vader, in the space saga, “Star Wars: A New Hope.”
While bodybuilder David Prowse would be the figure behind the black mask of the Sith lord, Jones was the voice that uttered so many iconic lines in the film and its sequels — including, “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” and then, of course, to Luke Skywalker in 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back,” his big reveal, “No, I am your father.”
Jones was always humble about being the voice of such an iconic foe.
“I’m simply special effects,” he told the American Film Institute in 2009 about voicing a character who was physically played by someone else. “George [Lucas] wanted, pardon the expression, a darker voice, so he hires a guy born in Mississippi, raised in Michigan, who stutters. That’s the voice, that’s me. I lucked out. From all these so-called handicaps, I lucked out to get a job that paid me $7,000, and I thought that was good money.”
In a 2004 documentary titled “Star Wars: Empire of Dreams,” Jones spoke about when he first found out that Vader, the film trilogy’s main villain, would reveal that he was the long-lost father of Skywalker, the primary hero.
“I said to myself, ‘He’s lying,'” Jones admitted. “I wonder how they are gonna play that lie out.”
James Earl Jones celebrates his 80th birthday by blowing the candles out on his cake at The Golden Theatre, Jan. 17, 2011, in New York.
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But it wasn’t a lie. From 1977 to 1983, the three original “Star Wars” films would become some of the most revered and original movies of their time, not just for special effects, but also for the shocking plot and themes.
After “Star Wars,” Jones made memorable appearances in Eddie Murphy’s 1988 film “Coming to America,” then starred opposite Kevin Costner in “Field of Dreams” in 1989. A few years later, he once again lent his voice to a famous character, starring in the Disney animated feature “The Lion King” as Mufasa.
Jones had almost 200 credits to his name, according to IMDB, as he stayed active for more than 60 years, including in movies like “The Sandlot,” shows like “House” and “The Simpsons,” and in his return to a galaxy far, far away in 2004’s “Revenge of the Sith.” He came back to voice Vader several more times in recent years, including in the animated series “Rebels,” 2016’s “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story,” 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker” and the 2022 Disney+ series “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”
He also reprised his role in the “Coming to America” sequel, “Coming 2 America,” in 2021.
In 2011, Jones was given an honorary Academy Award for the breadth of his acclaimed work.
It was while Jones was starring in the play “Driving Miss Daisy” in London in 2011 that he was surprised by co-star Vanessa Redgrave, who waited until the end of the show to let the crowd in on his honor that year. The cast and the academy held a special ceremony for Jones right on the stage, with Sir Ben Kingsley coming out to hand Jones his Oscar.
“If an actor’s nightmare is being onstage naked and not knowing his lines, what the heck do you call this?” he said of the surprise honor. “How do I feel? Well, more than flabbergasted. … That’s the only word I can think of for this improbable moment in my life.”
In March 2022, it was announced that Broadway’s Cort Theatre would be renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre.
Jones married twice. His second wife, Cecilia Hart, died in 2016 after 34 years of marriage. The couple is survived by their son, Flynn Earl Jones.