James Earl Jones, a film, TV and stage actor known for voicing iconic characters from “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader to “The Lion King” Mufasa, has died at the age of 93. Jones, a native of Arkabutla, Mississippi, died Monday morning at his home in Dutchess County, New York, his agent confirmed to Variety.
Farewell to James Earl Jones
After overcoming a severe stutter as a child, Jones has established himself as one of the pioneering black actors of his generation, amassing a career spanning more than 60 years, from his 1958 Broadway debut at the Cort Theatre, renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre in 2022, to his most recent performance in 2021’s “Coming 2 America.” For that film, Jones reprised his role as King Jaffe Joffer from Eddie Murphy’s 1988 comedy “Coming 2 America.” Widely regarded as one of the world’s greatest stage and screen actors, Jones is one of the few performers to have won the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony)—he has received two Primetime Emmy Awards, a Daytime Emmy, a spoken-word Grammy Award in 1977, and three Tony Awards, in addition to receiving the Honorary Academy Award.
The voices of Darth Vader and Mufasa
Despite the many awards, his most famous role remains the voice of one of the most famous villains in cinema, Darth Vader. In the mid-70s, Star Wars creator George Lucas had chosen the imposing British actor David Prowse for the part of Anakin Skywalker imprisoned in the black armor after the fall. However, he had decided to entrust the villain’s voice to someone else, someone with a “darker” tone, eventually opting for Jones. No one at the time imagined that Star Wars would become a global success and a cultural phenomenon. Jones had recorded his part in a few hours and was paid just $7,000 for the first film in the series: “I thought at the time that was a nice little nest egg,” the person concerned told the US media. Two decades after giving voice to the father of Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, Jones had done the same with the dignified Mufasa of The Lion King.
