NEW YORK (AP) — James Earl Jones, who overcame racial prejudices and a severe stutter to become a celebrated icon of stage and screen, and who eventually lent his deep and commanding voice to CNN, “The Lion King,” and Darth Vader, has passed away. He was 93 years old.
PUBLICIDAD
His agent, Barry McPherson, confirmed that Jones died on Monday morning at his home. The cause was not immediately clear.
PUBLICIDAD
Pioneer Jones, who worked well 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 Award for his career. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.
At the end of her life, she had an elegant figure, an ironic sense of humor, and a fierce work habit. In 2015, she arrived at the rehearsals for a Broadway production of "The Gin Game" having already memorized the play and with notebooks filled with comments from the creative team. She said she was always in service of the play.
"The need to tell stories has always been with us," he told The Associated Press at the time. "I think it first happened around campfires, when a man would come home and tell his family that he had caught the bear, but that the bear had not caught him."
Jones created memorable film roles such as the lonely writer who was persuaded to return to the spotlight in "Field of Dreams," boxer Jack Johnson in the theatrical and film success "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 highly sought-after voice actor, portraying the evil of Darth Vader ("No, I am your father," commonly misremembered as "Luke, I am your father"), as well as the benevolent dignity of King Mufasa in the Disney animated film "The Lion King" and announcing "This is CNN" during station breaks. He won a Grammy in 1977 for his performance in the audiobook "Great American Documents."
"If you were an actor or aspired to be one, if you were striving to make money on these streets looking for work, one of the standards we always had was to be a James Earl Jones," Samuel L. Jackson once said.