James Earl Jones dead at 93: Field of Dreams actor and voice of Darth Vader passes away in New York
Iconic actor James Earl Jones has died aged 93.
The Field of Dreams and Lion King star and voice of Darth Vader passed away on September 9 at his home in Dutchess County, NY, his representatives confirmed to Deadline.
Jones made his screen debut as a bombardier in Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 black-comedy masterpiece Dr. Strangelove.
While he continued to develop his film career over the following decades, the Tony-winning actor maintained a regular presence on stage as well.
He never appears on screen when playing his most famous role, Darth Vader, as it was the former bodybuilder David Prowse who wore the iconic black suit.
Iconic actor James Earl Jones has died aged 93 – pictured 2015
The star is pictured in Field of Dreams in 1989 alongside Kevin Costner
He was hired by Star Wars director George Lucas for Vader’s terrifying vocals – with Jones saying: ‘He thought about using Orson Welles but realized he might be too recognizable, so he hired me to do the voice, by just reading the words off the page. I did it in a couple of hours.’
Jones was paid a mere $7000 for Star Wars but a string of commercials that followed ‘took good care of him’, he said.
Jones initially did not want to be credited for the film, as he felt his voiceovers were simply part of the movie’s special effects, but eventually conceded, and went on to voice the character in multiple films, television series and video games
He notably played Vader in Star Wars (1977), The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983) then again in the first installment of the Star Wars anthology series—Rogue One (2016), and the third installment of the sequel trilogy, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.
‘I am your father,’ Vader tells Luke Skywalker, portrayed by Mark Hamill, in a pivotal fight scene in The Empire Strikes Back – a twist etched in cinema history.
Hamill took to X on Monday to pay tribute to Jones, writing: ‘RIP Dad’ – followed by a broken heart symbol.
‘He created, with very little dialogue, one of the greatest villains that ever lived,’ ‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas said in 2015 at a ceremony honoring Jones in New York.
In September 2022, Jones announced that he would retire from the role of voicing Darth Vader with future voice roles for Vader being created with Respeecher using archive audio of Jones.
Jones’ commercial heyday came in the 1980s and ’90s, when he appeared in Conan The Barbarian (1982), Field Of Dreams (1989) and The Hunt For Red October (1990), among many other films.
His distinctive gravelly tones saw him voice iconic lion Mufasa in the animated 1994 classic, The Lion King
Jones lent his legendary vocals to Star Wars supervillain Darth Vader
‘He created, with very little dialogue, one of the greatest villains that ever lived,’ ‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas said in 2015 at a ceremony honoring Jones in New York – pictured together 2006
The star is pictured with his Tony Award in 1987 for his role in the play Fences – seen with Linda Lavin
Even into his 80s, Jones was a force on Broadway, starring opposite Angela Lansbury in The Best Man in a 2012 revival (pictured) – earning another Tony nomination in the process
In 1982, he married actress Cecilia Hart, with whom he had a son, Flynn. Hart died from ovarian cancer on October 16, 2016 – pictured 1994
Jones is among an illustrious list of entertainers who achieved coveted EGOT status – winning two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Grammy Award and three Tony Awards and being presented with the Honorary Academy Award.
His distinctive gravelly tones saw him voice iconic lion Mufasa in the animated 1994 classic, The Lion King.
He reprised the role in 1998’s The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride and 2018’s live-action remake.
Discussing how he voiced the ‘dignified’ lion, he said: ‘My first mistake was to try and make him regal. And what they really needed was something more like me. “They said, “What are you like as a father?” and I said, “Well, I’m really a dopey dad.”
‘And so they began to impose my facial expressions onto Mufasa, and a different tone of voice. Yeah, he was authoritative, but he was just a gentle dad.
Jones married actress and singer Julienne Marie in 1964 – they had no children and divorced in 1972.
In 1982, he married actress Cecilia Hart, with whom he had a son, Flynn. Hart died from ovarian cancer on October 16, 2016.
In April 2016 Jones revealed he had been battling type 2 diabetes for nearly two decades.
He was diagnosed in the mid 1990s after falling asleep at the gym.
He said in a 2018 interview: ‘I didn’t notice any symptoms. I had gone to a diet and exercise program hoping to lose some weight and ended up falling asleep sitting on a bench in the gymnasium.
‘My doctor, who happened to be there, said that’s not normal. He encouraged me to go get a test, and I did — and there it was: type 2 diabetes. It hit me like a thunderbolt.
He starred in the 1970 film adaptation of The Great White Hope as Jack Jefferson (pictured) for which he received his first Academy award nomination for Best Actor. He was the second African-American male performer after Sidney Poitier to be nominated for this award
Jones is pictured as Detective Capt. Woodrow ‘Woody’ Paris on CBS show Paris in 1979
‘I had to retrain myself to be aware of when my body is telling me something,’ Jones says. ‘Usually with low blood sugar, it’s easy to notice. With high blood sugar, it’s not as easy, and that can be the most dangerous aspect of type 2 diabetes.
‘I can live to the extent that I can do all the work I used to do 10 years ago,’ he says. ‘I love working, and at my age I still love being able to put in eight shows a week on a play or handle a long schedule if I’m doing film or television. I didn’t want that to stop, so I had to take responsibility with my condition.’
Jones made his Broadway debut in 1957 and during his illustrious career, he scooped two Tony Awards – both for Best Lead Actor in a Play – one for his role in The Great White Hope in 1969 and another in 1987 for his part in Fences.
Jones previously said: ‘When I came to NY to study acting, my father – the actor Robert Earl Jones – took me on a Grand Tour. The first night was to the opera Tosca starring Leontyne Price. I loved the singing, but I didn’t understand the format of opera.’
‘The second night was Swan Lake starring Margot Fontaine. The movement of the bodies just seemed like magic.
‘The third night was Pal Joey. I was captivated by the warmth of the light on stage. I was not inspired to sing and dance, but I knew I wanted to be in the warmth of the stage light.’
The star is pictured with his honorary Oscar at the 84th Academy Awards in 2012
The star is pictured with his two Emmy Awards in 1991 for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series for Gabriel’s Fire, and Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Mini-Series or Special for the TNT movie Heat Wave
The fourth night was Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. By contrast, it created a cold world, coldness between human beings, but the ideas that Arthur Miller was able to evoke onstage were blazing hot.’
‘I knew I wanted to be a part of this and to explore the stage.’
His film debut came in 1964’s Dr. Strangelove as Lt. Lothar Zogg. He starred in the 1970 film adaptation of The Great White Hope as Jack Jefferson.
This earned him his first two Golden Globe nominations – for Best Actor and New Star of the Year – winning the latter.
He also received his first Academy award nomination for Best Actor. He was the second African-American male performer after Sidney Poitier to be nominated for this award.
The star’s film work continued with Malcolm X (1972), Johnny Williams in The River Niger (1976), Nick Debrett in Swashbuckler (1976), Malcolm X again in The Greatest (1977), and The Bushido Blade with Richard Boone (1979).
Jones’ bass vocals have became known as one of the most recognizable voices in the world, but he was almost mute as a child for eight years, due to a severe stutter.
Jones was born in Arkabutla, Mississippi and from the age of five was raised by his maternal grandparents on their farm in Dublin, Michigan.
In a 2010 interview Jones said that although he was born in Mississippi, his family moved when he was five years old to a Michigan farm, which played havoc with his sinuses – and his speech development.
The family upheaval that included his maternal grandparents and his mother (his father was out of the picture before he was born) and 13 cousins was understandably traumatizing.
‘I had an Uncle Randy… who was my brother really. I was the youngest grandchild and he was the youngest child and only four years older than me. Randy stuttered while we lived in Mississippi and I feel that I mocked him,’ he says. ‘I used to imitate him. I don’t know whether I was imitating him to keep him company or to embarrass him. And then I ended up stuttering myself. I feel I was cursed.’
‘As a small child, I would communicate to my family, or at least those who didn’t mind being embarrassed by my stutter or my being embarrassed. I did communicate with the animals quite freely, but then that’s calling the hogs, the cows, the chickens. They don’t care how you sound, they just want to hear your voice.’
He was taught by English teacher, and poet, Donald Crouch, whom he calls ‘the father of my voice’. He was a contemporary of Robert Frost, and memorised a poem every day in case he ever went blind so he might have poems he could read in his head.
His teacher argued that if Jones wanted to be ‘involved with words’ he would have to be able to say them and read to the class and work on the stuttering problem.
Jones is seen in his final onscreen role as King Jaffe Joffer in 2021’s Coming 2 America
Jones is seen accepting the Life Achievement award during the 15th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards in 2009
Jones is pictured in 1968 getting ready for his performance in The Great White Hope on Broadway
‘And he got me engaged in the debating class, the dramatic reading class and so on. He got me talking, and reading poetry – Edgar Allan Poe was my favourite.’
‘He said, ‘You have gone from having the voice of a child when you last spoke, to a voice of an adult when you resumed speaking. Don’t be impressed. It’s easy for you to start listening to yourself. If you do, nobody else will.’
‘And what he meant was that if you become so conscious about it you become too busy making all those deep S-O-U-N-D-S,’ and he lets the word echo in his booming voice.
Jones went on to study drama at Michigan University, by which time, he says, he had got a grip on his stutter.
‘I’ve learned that sometimes the synapses in your brain trip up, like stumbling on a sidewalk.’
Certain consonants, he said, set off a stutter (such as M) so he avoided them.
Jones remained humble on the appeal of his iconic voice, saying: ‘I don’t know, because I don’t listen to my own voice. Any human being does not hear their own voice as others hear it. We hear our voices through our cranium and it is a different sound.’
Initially, he studied to become a doctor, and though he shifted his major to drama, and graduated from the University of Michigan, he didn’t initially think about an acting career.
“Even when I began acting studies, I thought about being a soldier,” Jones told PBS public television in 1998.
“And the idea of being an actor didn’t occur to me until after my service was almost finished.”
After university, Jones served in the US Army and then moved to New York to try his luck in acting, working as a janitor at night to make ends meet.
He made his Broadway debut in 1958 in Sunrise at Campobello at the Cort Theatre — which in 2022 was renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre.
During the early to mid 1960s, Jones became one of the most in-demand Shakespearean actors of the time – starring in Othello, King Lear, Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Abhorson in Measure for Measure, and Claudius in Hamlet.
He starred with Cicely Tyson in The Gin Game in 2015 on Broadway
In 1974, Jones starred with Diahann Carroll in the film Claudine which won him another Golden Globe nomination.
Even into his 80s, Jones was a force on Broadway, starring opposite Angela Lansbury in The Best Man in a 2012 revival – earning another Tony nomination in the process – and with Cicely Tyson in The Gin Game in 2015.
And for years, he greeted viewers of the cable news network CNN with the simple phrase: ‘This is CNN.’
In a statement, CNN said that Jones ‘was the voice of CNN and our brand for many decades, uniquely conveying through speech instant authority, grace, and decorum. That remarkable voice is just one of many things the world will miss about James. ‘
Jones’ final onscreen role was as King Jaffe Joffer in 2021’s Coming 2 America.
