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 challenges in his early years in northern Michigan, Jones went on to build a brilliant list of credits on and off Broadway, in television and on the big screen.
His face was instantly recognizable. So was his deep, velvety voice that exuded strength and authority. Besides his turn 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 CNN cable news network for its tagline, “This … is CNN.”
Lauded with numerous awards throughout the decades, Jones was among the 20 or so artists who made it into the prestigious EGOT club for winning the 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 and the blue-collar, trash-collecting lead character of 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 younger days. As he told the Free Press in 1996, “I am the gentlest of men, actually. I grew up in Michigan when we still sat on the side of the highway and waved to the passing cars."
Jones was born in Mississippi in 1931. His father, the actor Robert Earl Jones, left the family before he was born. His mother remarried and turned over his raising to his grandparents, who moved to a farm near Dublin in Manistee County when he was about 5.
As a child, Jones developed a stutter and painful shyness that kept him mostly silent 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 I was — I was 8 — we were bragging about what we wanted to be. I said, 'I'm gonna be an actor on the stage.' My grandfather gave me a slap on the head. 'Don't you dare,' he said. He knew my father was an actor and he felt 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 recounted to the Free Press how Crouch had praised a poem he had written for an assignment, then asked him to recite it to the class from memory. Jones was able to do it without stuttering.
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In October 2023, a statue of Jones and his mentor, Crouch, was unveiled in Brethren, Michigan, outside of Kaleva Norman Dickson Public Schools to honor the famous student and his mentor.
After graduating from high school in 1949 and earning a scholarship to the University of Michigan, Jones started college on a pre-med track, but was drawn inexorably to acting. He earned a degree in drama in 1955. In 1971, the university gave him an honorary doctor of humane letters.
“I was just a baby,” Jones, who acted in U-M productions, said to the Free Press in 1993. “I felt proud that I got my wings there.”
Jones also joined the ROTC in college 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 the theater He joined the New York Shakespeare Festival in 1960, earning praise in 1964 for his interpretation of the title role in “Othello.” That same year, he landed a small part in the movies, in Stanley Kubrick’s anti-war satire, “Dr. Strangelove.” Several years later, for his work in the 1970 cinematic version of “The Great White Hope” (a role that earned him a Tony on Broadway), Jones was nominated for a best actor Oscar.
His other big-screen roles included playing Admiral Greer to Harrison Ford's Jack Ryan in "Patriot Games" and "Clear and Present Danger" (and the same character to Alec Baldwin's Ryan in "The Hunt for Red October"), an NSA agent in the Robert Redford-Sidney Poitier caper film "Sneakers," and Diahann Carroll's garbage-collector love interest in "Claudine."
Jones also took on numerous TV roles, appearing in everything from now-gone daytime soaps 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 popped up in popular hits like “The Big Bang Theory” and “House, M.D.”
Across the span of more than 60 years, Jones accumulated most of the top honors in the entertainment industry. In 1992, he was given the National Medal of the Arts by President George Bush. In 1992, he received Kennedy Center Honors. In 2009, he was given a lifetime achievement Screen Actors Guild award, followed two years later by his honorary Oscar.
In 2017, Jones was presented a Tony Award for lifetime achievement. In 2022, Broadway's Cort Theater was renamed the James Earl Jones Theater.
On Monday, as news spread of Jones' passing, tributes to Jones from the acting community flooded social media. "James Earl Jones … there will never be another of his particular combination of graces," posted LeVar Burton 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 your best," tweeted Colman Domingo.
One of the most endearing posts came from Mark Hamill, aka Luke Skywalker of 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 film 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 acclaim 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 into reading reviews, it's work. I've got no complaints. But if you're expecting pain and remorse and agony over leaving this play, forget it. Believe me, there is no romanticism about it at all. I can't wait to turn it over to someone else.”
That was Jones’ ethos. He was dedicated to the work, not his stardom. A gentle man who grew up in a small Michigan town waving at cars and shared his talent with the entire world.
Contact Detroit Free Press pop culture critic Julie Hinds at jhinds@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader and CNN who was raised in Michigan, dies at 93
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