James Earl Jones, Revered Actor With Legendary Voice, Has Died At 93
The 'Field of Dreams' and 'The Sandlot' actor voiced Darth Vader and Mufasa
Everything the light touches is just a little darker. Let’s just say it was Moe. James Earl Jones, distinguished actor of stage and screen with a booming voice over a six-decade career that achieved an EGOT, died on Monday morning at his home in Pawling in Dutchess County, New York at 93 years old. He was surrounded by his family, according to longtime agent Barry McPherson at Independent Artist Group.
James Earl Jones was born on January 17, 1931 on a farm in Arkabutla, Mississippi. His father, Robert Earl Jones, left home soon after in pursuit his own acting career. He moved with his maternal grandparents to Michigan at the age of 5 and had a stutter he overcame that often left him preferring silence for long periods. This led him into acting thanks to a high school teacher’s use of poetry to help him with clearer speaking. Jones went to college and then the Army, serving in the Korean War, and eyed Broadway for his career aspirations. Reconciliation between James and his father occurred when James was in his 20s, going as far as performing together. James first performed at the Cort Theatre in 1958, a theater that would eventually renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre in 2022. He was nominated for four Tony Awards, and won two, in 1969 for playing boxer Jack Johnson in The Great White Hope, reprising the role for its 1970 film adaptation, resulting in his only Oscar nomination, and in 1987 for originating the role of Troy Maxson in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Fences.
His TV work started about the same time. Jones earned his first Emmy nomination for guest acting on the single-season CBS series East Side/West Side in 1963. Both of his Primetime Emmy wins came 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. It is his role as Vice Admiral James Greer that connects three Jack Ryan movies, 1990’s The Hunt for Red October 1992’s Patriot Games and 1994’s Clear and Present Danger that could and would otherwise be perceived as standalone adaptations. Jones also appeared in Field of Dreams, Dr. Strangelove, Conan the Barbarian, The Sandlot, its first sequel, and Sneakers.
His most famous roles, possibly even surpassing his live-action work, are voicing the iconic villain Darth Vader of the Star Wars franchise starting with the original trilogy, and Mufasa in The Lion King. Notably, he continued these roles into subsequent productions decades down the road, whether it was 2005’s Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, the animated series Star Wars Rebels, 2016’s Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker on the Star Wars side, or The Lion King’s sequels, its spinoff The Lion Guard’s pilot movie Return of the Roar, and the 2019 CG remake. By the time of the 2022 Obi-Wan Kenobi miniseries, he had signed off on an AI voice clone made possible by Respeecher with archival recordings. His final film role was reprising as King Jaffe Joffer in the Coming to America sequel Coming 2 America, the role that made his Lion King casting very intentional. Mark Hamill, whose role as Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films made for a Jones line that became one of the biggest and most misquoted lines in film history, tweeted a simple “#RIP dad 💔”, which on Instagram was preceded by “One of the world’s finest actors whose contributions to Star Wars were immeasurable. He’ll be greatly missed. Crystal Minkoff, wife of The Lion King co-director Rob Minkoff, wrote on Instagram captioning a photo of Jones holding a Mufasa statue: “Rest in Power, Mr. Jones. You made a young animator’s dream come true when you accepted the role of Mufasa. Thank you for all you have done for Rob. Your memory will live on. ❤️”. Actor Henry Winkler tweeted “James Earl Jones was our good friend and set an example for how to live and work with power and grace . Rest well . We loved and love you.”
Some of Jones’s other TV appearances include being one of Sesame Street’s earliest guests in 1969, eventually returning in 2004, CNN’s announcer, narrating over a dozen episodes of 3rd Rock from the Sun, and contributing to all three segments of The Simpsons’s first “Treehouse of Horror”, as the moving man in "Bad Dream House", Serak the Preparer in "Hungry Are the Damned", and the narrator in "The Raven". He returned to The Simpsons twice, as Maggie in “Treehouse of Horror V” in a briefly visited universe “Time and Punishment”, and then narrated the ending of “Das Bus”. He returned ruling fictional African nations as President Dibala in the House M.D. episode “The Tyrant”, which was a pivotal episode for Jesse Spencer’s Dr. Robert Chase. In advertising, he was the spokesperson for Bell Atlantic and the Yellow Pages, even carrying over to the early days of Verizon following Bell Atlantic’s merger with GTE. In a statement, CNN said Jones "was the voice of… 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."
Theatre is arguably where Jones shined most and longest. He returned to Broadway in 2005 for a production of On Golden Pond with Leslie Uggams, earning him another Tony nomination. There years later he took on the role of Big Daddy for a run of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with an all-Black cast including Terrence Howard, Anika Noni Rose and Phylicia Rashad. In 2010 he starred in a Broadway revival of Driving Miss Daisy opposite Vanessa Redgrave. Its move to London complicated getting his Honorary Oscar in person, so Ben Kingsley delivered it to him in person.
For one more tribute, Field of Dreams co-star Kevin Costner posted to Instagram “That booming voice. That quiet strength. The kindness that he radiated. So much can be said about his legacy, so I’ll just say how thankful I am that part of it includes Field of Dreams. If you’ve seen it, you know that this movie wouldn’t be the same with anyone else in his role. Only he could bring that kind of magic to a movie about baseball and a corn field in Iowa. I’m grateful to have been a witness to him making that magic happen.”
Jones earned a Kennedy Center Honor in 2002, the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement award in 2009, and a lifetime achievement Tony Award in 2017. His Grammy award, the last of the EGOT that hasn’t been touched upon was for spoken word in 1977. He was first married to actress-singer Julienne Marie from 1968 to 1972. His second wife of 34 years, actress Cecilia Hart, died in 2016. He is survived by their son, Flynn Earl Jones. The circle of life moves us all.
Sources: Deadline (1, 2), Variety, ABC News, Henry Winkler
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