Actor James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader, dies at 93

NEW YORK (AP) — James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudice and a severe stutter to become an icon of stage and screen, lending his deep, commanding voice to CNN, “The Lion King” and Darth Vader, has died. He was 93.

His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed that Jones died Monday morning at his home. The cause was not yet known.

Jones, a pioneer who worked into his 80s, won two Emmy Awards, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts, the Kennedy Center Honors, and received an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for his career. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.

He was elegant in his later years, with a wry sense of humor and a work ethic. In 2015, he arrived at rehearsals for a Broadway production of “The Gin Game” with the play memorized and notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. He said he was always in service to his work.

“We’ve always had a need to tell stories,” he told The Associated Press. “I think it first happened around a campfire, when a man came home and told his family he got the bear, but not the bear.”

Jones has created memorable film roles, including the reclusive writer who returns to the spotlight in “Field of Dreams,” boxer Jack Johnson in the stage and screen hit “The Great White Hope,” writer Alex Haley in “Roots: The Next Generation” and a South African minister in “Cry, the Beloved Country.”

He was also a sought-after voice actor, voicing the villainous Darth Vader (“No, I am your father,” often misnamed “Luke, I am your father”) and the benevolent dignity of King Mufasa in the Disney animated film “The Lion King” and announcing “This is CNN” during radio breaks. He won a Grammy in 1977 for his performance in the audiobook “Great American Documents.”

“If you were an actor or aspiring to be an actor, if you were rushing out into the streets looking for work, one of the criteria we always had was to be a James Earl Jones,” Samuel L. Jackson once said.

His other films include “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Greatest” (with Muhammad Ali), “Conan the Barbarian,” “Three Fugitives,” and he played an admiral in three successful Tom Clancy adaptations: “The Hunt for Red October,” “Fatherland Games” and “Clear and Present Danger.” In a rare romantic comedy, “Claudine,” Jones had an onscreen romance with Diahann Carroll.

Jones made his Broadway debut in 1958 in Sunrise at Campobello and won two Tony Awards for The Great White Hope (1969) and Fences (1987). He was also nominated for On Golden Pond (2005) and Gore Vidal’s The Best Man (2012). He was known for his mastery of Shakespeare and Athol Fugard. More recent Broadway credits include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Chauffeured Miss Daisy, The Iceman Cometh, and You Can’t Take It with You.

A rising stage and television actor, he appeared in “As the World Turns” in 1965, becoming one of the first African-American actors to play a permanent role on a television soap opera. He performed with the New York Shakespeare Festival Theater in “Othello,” “Macbeth” and “King Lear” as well as in off-Broadway plays.

Jones was born by the light of an oil lamp in a shack in Arkabutla, Mississippi, on January 17, 1931. His father, Robert Earl Jones, had abandoned his wife before the baby’s arrival to pursue a life as a boxer and, later, an actor.

At the age of 6, Jones was taken by his mother to her parents’ farm near Manistee, Michigan. His grandparents adopted the boy and raised him.

“A world ended for me, the safe world of childhood,” Jones wrote in his autobiography, “Voices and Silences.” “The move from Mississippi to Michigan was supposed to be a glorious event. For me, it was heartbreaking, and soon afterward I began to stutter.”

Too embarrassed to speak, he remained virtually mute for years, communicating with teachers and classmates through handwritten notes. An understanding high school teacher, Donald Crouch, learned that the boy wrote poetry and demanded that Jones read one of his poems aloud in class. He did so without fail.

The teacher and student worked together to get the boy to speak normally. “I couldn’t get enough of talking, debating, making speeches, acting,” he recalls in his book.

At the University of Michigan, he failed a medical school exam and turned to theater, also playing four seasons of basketball. He served in the Army from 1953 to 1955.

In New York, he moved in with his father and enrolled in the American Theater Wing’s program for young actors. The father and son waxed floors to support themselves while looking for acting jobs.

True fame came in 1970 with “The Great White Hope.” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play depicted the struggles of Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, against the backdrop of racist early 20th-century America. In 1972, Jones reprised his role in the film version and was nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor.

Both of Jones’ wives were also actresses. He married Julienne Marie Hendricks in 1967. After their divorce, he married Cecilia Hart, best known for her role as Stacey Erickson on the CBS crime drama “Paris,” in 1982. (She died in 2016.) They had a son, Flynn Earl, born in 1983.

In 2022, Broadway’s Cort Theatre was renamed in Jones’ honor, with a ceremony featuring Norm Lewis singing “Go the Distance,” Brian Stokes Mitchell singing “Make Them Hear You,” and lyrics by Mayor Eric Adams, Samuel L. Jackson, and LaTanya Richardson Jackson.

“You can’t imagine an artist who has served America as much,” director Kenny Leon told the AP. “It seems like a small act, but it’s a huge action. It’s something we can look at and see in a tangible way.”

Citing his stutter as one reason he was not a political activist, Jones nonetheless hoped his art could change minds.

“I learned early on, through people like Athol Fugard, that you can’t change anybody’s mind, no matter what you do,” he told the AP. “As a preacher, as an academic, you can’t change their mind. But you can change how they feel.”