The voice, the man, the acting legend is gone.
Hollywood icon James Earl Jones died Monday morning at the age of 93 at his home in Dutchess County, New York, after a lifelong career in theater and film.
A prolific EGOT-winning stage and screen actor, according to USA Today, Jones received recognition from every major award ceremony in the industry. He died “surrounded by his loved ones.”
“Star Wars” co-star Mark Hamill shared a simple message on X, formerly known as Twitter: “#RIP dad 💔.” Jones’ unmistakable voice brought speech to Darth Vader Star who proclaimed to be Luke’s father in “Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.”
Born in Arkabutla, Mississippi and raised by his grandparents in Michigan, as reported by People Magazine, Jones struggled in silence with a stutter for eight years as a child.
“I stuttered badly, and so I retreated and lived in a world of silence rather than speak,” the actor said in 2002 to a congressional panel. He overcame the speech impediment with the help of a teacher and began to write poetry, which his teacher encouraged him to read aloud.
Jones said in his memoir “Voices and Silences,”: “The written word is safe for the stutterer. The script is a sanctuary.”
However, acting was not always Jones’s plan for his life. He studied pre-med at the University of Michigan, joined the U.S. Army then found acting. He worked as a janitor to make ends meet.
A theater production of “The Great White Hope” in 1967 made Jones a household name outside of Hollywood. He earned a Tony Award for Best Actor in 1969. He portrayed the lead in the film adaptation in 1970, for which he earned a Golden Globe and an Academy Award nomination.
After Sidney Poitier, Jones was the second Black actor to receive an Oscar nomination.
His training in theater and his deep voice were ideal for challenging roles such as Shakespeare‘s characters, but Black actors rarely performed lead roles in Shakespeare plays.
“If it bothers someone that I’m Black and playing Lear, it isn’t because there’s something wrong with me. It’s their problem,” he told PEOPLE in 1974.
Jones’s lent his voice to “Darth Vader” in the 1977 “Star Wars” film, after which he married his second wife, Cecilia Hart. They had a son, Flynn, in 1982. Hart died in 2016.
Jones’ second Tony Award came in 1987 in August Wilson’s “Fences.”
Jones always called himself a “journeyman actor” as his career moved from film to television and back to theater. He won two Emmy
Awards in 1990 for “Gabriel’s Fire” and the TV miniseries “Heat Wave.”
Emmy nominations piled up for guest starring on “Everwood,” “Under One Roof,” “Picket Fences” and “Fraiser.”
In the 1990s, Jones accidentally learned he had type 2 diabetes. He launched “I Can Imagine” to help others take control of the disease.
The 21st Century brought Jones back to the theater in productions of “On Golden Pond,” “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” and “Much Ado About Nothing.” His fourth Tony nomination for Best Man was in 2012.
Voice roles that would solidify him as an icon also came in the 21st Century with “Darth Vader” in an animated series and with a reprisal of “Mufasa” in a live-action film of “The Lion King.”
Jones loved acting.
“I’d like to play anything that gives me a chance to learn about people who are truly different from me,” he told PEOPLE. “I want to say as much as possible about how I feel about myself — not my Black self or my American self, but my real self.”
Other memorable film roles include “Coming to America” in 1988, “Field of Dreams” in 1989, “The Sandlot” in 1993 and “The Hunt for Red October” in 1990.
Jones signed a deal with Lucasfilm in 2022 that his voice may be archived and used in the future to artificially generate the voice of “Darth Vader.” He also retired from voicing the role and said that future voicing would be created by Respeecher with his archived audio.
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Rebecca Barnabi
