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James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader raised in Michigan, dies at 93

Vaseline September 10, 2024

As one of the greatest actors of his generation and the iconic voice of “Star Wars” villain Darth Vader, James Earl Jones played a larger-than-life role in American culture throughout his long, illustrious career.

Jones died Monday. He was 93.

After overcoming the challenges of his early years in Northern Michigan, Jones went on to build a stellar list of credits on and off-Broadway, on television and on the big screen.

His face was instantly recognizable. And his deep, velvety voice radiated power and authority. In addition to his role as Vader in the original “Star Wars” trilogy, Jones lent his voice to the regal Mufasa in the 1994 animated Disney classic “The Lion King” and its 2019 CGI reboot, and to the cable news network CNN for the tagline “This … is CNN.”

Jones has won numerous awards over the decades and is among the 20 or so artists who have made it into the prestigious EGOT club, winning an Emmy, Grammy, Tony and, in his case, an honorary lifetime achievement Oscar in 2011.

His characters ranged from Shakespearean giants like Othello and King Lear to the working-class, garbage-collector protagonist in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 1987 play “Fences” to the king who is Eddie Murphy’s father in the 1988 comedy classic “Coming to America.”

But Jones never lost sight of his upbringing in northern Michigan. As he told the Free Press in 1996, “I’m actually the most gentle of men. I grew up in Michigan when we used to sit on the side of the highway and wave at cars as they passed by.”

Jones was born in Mississippi in 1931. His father, actor Robert Earl Jones, left the family before he was born. His mother remarried and left his upbringing to his grandparents, who moved to a farm near Dublin in Manistee Country when he was about 5.

As a child, Jones developed a stutter and painful shyness that kept him quiet for years. But he harbored dreams of acting. As he told the Free Press in the late 1980s: “One day my Uncle Randy, who was only four years older than me — I was 8 — was bragging about what we wanted to be. I said, ‘I’m going to be a stage actor.’ My grandfather smacked me on the head. ‘Don’t you dare,’ he said. He knew my father was an actor, and he thought he was a vagabond, that actors led unstable lives.”

Jones attended a one-room grammar school in Dublin and then high school in Brethren, north of Manistee. He credited his high school English teacher, Donald Crouch, with helping him overcome his stutter. Jones told the Free Press how Crouch praised a poem he had written for an assignment and then asked him to recite it from memory to the class. Jones was able to do so without stuttering.

More: University of Michigan Alumni Benj Pasek and Justin Paul Win Emmys, Complete EGOTs

In October 2023, a statue of Jones and his mentor, Crouch, was unveiled outside the Kaleva Norman Dickson Public Schools in Brethren, Michigan, in honor of the famous student and his mentor.

After graduating from high school in 1949 and earning a scholarship to the University of Michigan, Jones began college on a pre-med track but was irrevocably drawn to acting. He earned a degree in drama in 1955. In 1971, the university awarded him an honorary doctorate in humane letters.

“I was just a baby,” Jones, who appeared in UM productions, told the Free Press in 1993. “I was proud that I got my wings there.”

Jones also joined the ROTC while a student in Ann Arbor and was promoted to first lieutenant before being discharged from the Army.

In 1955, Jones moved to New York City to pursue a career in theater. He joined the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1960 and received acclaim for his portrayal of the title role in “Othello” in 1964. That same year, he had a small film role in Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war satire, “Dr. Strangelove.” A few years later, Jones was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his work in the 1970 film version of “The Great White Hope” (a role that earned him a Tony on Broadway).

Other roles he played on the big screen included the role of Admiral Greer opposite Harrison Ford’s Jack Ryan in “Patriot Games” and “Clear and Present Danger” (and the same role as Alec Baldwin’s Ryan in “The Hunt for Red October”), an NSA agent in the Robert Redford-Sidney Poitier film “Sneakers” and Diahann Carroll’s garbage collector in “Claudine.”

Jones has also taken on numerous television roles, appearing in everything from now-defunct soap operas to acclaimed dramas like “Homicide: Life on the Street.” In the 1979 miniseries “Roots: The Next Generation,” he played “Roots” author Alex Haley. More recently, he has appeared in such popular hits as “The Big Bang Theory” and “House, MD.”

For more than 60 years, Jones has collected most of the entertainment industry’s highest honors. In 1992, he received the National Medal of the Arts from President George Bush. In 1992, he received Kennedy Center Honors. In 2009, he received a Lifetime Achievement Screen Actors Guild Award, followed two years later by his honorary Oscar.

In 2017, Jones received a Tony Award for lifetime achievement. In 2022, Broadway’s Cort Theatre was renamed the James Earl Jones Theater.

On Monday, as news of Jones’ passing spread, tributes to Jones from the acting community flooded social media. “James Earl Jones… there will never be another of his special combinations of graces,” LeVar Burton posted on X (formerly Twitter). “Thank you, dear James Earl Jones, for everything. A master of our craft. We stand on your shoulders. Rest now. You gave us the best,” Colman Domingo tweeted.

One of the most endearing messages came from Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars franchise, who tweeted a simple “#RIP dad” followed by a broken heart emoji.

It was Jones as Vader who uttered one of the most immortal lines in cinematic history to Skywalker: “I am your father.” Jones’ final “Star Wars” credit as the voice of Vader was in the 2022 Disney+ miniseries “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” according to the IMDb website.

Throughout his life, Jones kept the praise he received in perspective. As he prepared to conclude his celebrated Tony-winning run in “Fences” in 1988, Jones told Free Press theater critic Lawrence Devine, “There’s no real glory. If you don’t get into curtain calls and reading reviews, it’s work. I have no complaints. But if you’re expecting pain and regret and torment about leaving this play, forget it. Believe me, there’s no romance in it at all. I can’t wait to leave it to someone else.”

That was Jones’ ethos. He was dedicated to the work, not his stardom. A soft-spoken man who grew up in a small town in Michigan, waving at cars and sharing his talent with the world.

Contact Julie Hinds, pop culture critic at Detroit Free Press, at [email protected].