The Oscar nominee was known for voicing Darth Vader in “Star Wars.”
Legendary actor James Earl Jones, best known for his innumerable movie roles and the booming voice of the character of Darth Vader in the “Star Wars” franchise, has died, his representative confirmed to ABC News.
He was 93 years old.
Jones died on Monday morning at his home in Dutchess County, New York, surrounded by his family, according to longtime agent Barry McPherson.
The thespian, whose powerful, deep voice brought to life the iconic villain of Darth Vader, acted for more than six decades and won three Tony Awards, including a lifetime honor in 2017, two Emmys and a Grammy. He was recognized for lifetime achievement by the Academy Awards in 2011.
Jones was born in 1931 in Mississippi and famously battled a severe stutter as a child.”People would come to the house and there’d be introductions made and I couldn’t introduce myself,” he told PBS in 2014 of just how bad the affliction was back then. Jones said he learned to stayed silent for long stretches at a time.
“I found it was, oh, so good sometimes because silence isn’t bad. It’s good to listen. And I learned to listen,” Jones told PBS.It was the stutter that led Jones into acting after a high school teacher used poetry to help him speak more clearly. After college and then the Army, serving in the Korean War, Jones eyed Broadway for his start in theater and the arts.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Jones was a Broadway staple. From “On Golden Pond” to “The Best Man,” his work earned four Tony nominations, winning for “The Great White Hope” in 1969 and “Fences” in 1987.Almost simultaneously, he was garnering acclaim on TV as well. The eventual two-time Emmy Award winner earned his first nod in the 1960s for his work on “East Side/West Side.”
picked up both his Primetime Emmy wins 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.Jones later earned his first Oscar nod, adapting “The Great White Hope” to the silver screen in 1970, playing boxer Jack Jefferson. Jones was just the second Black actor after Sidney Poitier — who was nominated in 1958 and 1963 — to be recognized by the academy with a nomination.
For the better part of the 1970s, Jones continued to juggle his work on stage, TV and film. Then, in 1977, he was cast as the voice of a new villain, Darth Vader, in the space saga, “Star Wars: A New Hope.”
While bodybuilder David Prowse would be the figure behind the black mask of the Sith lord, Jones was the voice that uttered so many iconic lines in the film and its sequels — including, “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” and then, of course, to Luke Skywalker in 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back,” his big reveal, “No, I am your father.”