James Earl Jones, voice of Darth Vader, dies at 93
“You have failed me for the last time,” he said as Darth Vader . “We are all connected in the great circle of life,” he said as Mufasa in The Lion King. “Let them wait!” he bellowed as the king in “Coming to America.” And simply , “This is CNN.”
You’ve probably heard his voice. The actor James Earl Jones had a commanding physical presence , a hearty laugh , and a booming baritone voice ; in any film, play , or television show he appeared in, he had the most distinctive voice in the whole production .
James Earl Jones died in September 2024 at the age of 93. He appeared in almost 200 movies and television shows. His voice was one of the most recognizable in all of Hollywood.
But the incredible thing is how close the world came to never enjoying Jones’s singular talents . James Earl Jones was born in the southern state of Mississippi in 1931, a time and place where black and white people lived apart in forced segregation . When young James Earl was only five years old, his family moved north to Michigan, where racial oppression was less severe .
The move left him traumatized . He developed a severe stutter and was embarrassed to speak in public . He said in interviews that he went mute between the ages of eight and fourteen; his family and teachers worried he would never speak again.
But he did write. And an English teacher convinced him to read his poetry aloud to the class; he discovered that when he was reading, he didn’t stutter. And thus was born his love of the stage , of reading lines before crowds .
He started his acting career on the stage. In his breakthrough performance on Broadway, he played a boxer in “The Great White Hope.” He won a Tony Award in 1968 for that role , and then earned an Oscar nomination for the film adaptation two years later.
Jones enjoyed Shakespeare roles: he played King Lear and Othello, among others. And then came a big break .
Director George Lucas was filming the first Star Wars movie. He had an actor playing his uber-villain Darth Vader, but his faceless character needed a more fearsome voice . So Lucas called James Earl Jones and the actor agreed to do two-and-a-half hours of voice-over work . He became the voice of Darth Vader. He earned a few thousand dollars for his work, and a place in movie history .
His roles, after that, were most often supporting roles — rarely the main character. He was an authoritative character in “Field of Dreams” and “The Hunt for Red October.” He also played in comedies —the king who takes himself too seriously in “Coming to America” and a crewmember on a military plane in the satire , “Dr. Strangelove.”
He voiced the role of the lion Mufasa in the Disney animated movie , “The Lion King” from 1994. He was the driver to Angela Lansbury’s character in “Driving Miss Daisy.” He continued to voice Darth Vader up until 2019.
By that time , his career had spanned almost seventy years and 190 screen credits . He counted the civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr., among his fans . Actors Denzel Washington and Samuel L. Jackson looked up to him . He was considered a trailblazer for black performers.
CNN, the news network , went on the air in 1980. A decade later, they were looking for someone to voice a very short promo that would be played between segments . As a relatively new force in news, the network wanted someone to lend authority to their brand.
They knew exactly where to turn. Jones said the whole recording took five minutes—but for decades, his voice saying “This is CNN” played at intervals around the clock in all the countries CNN broadcasts in.
In his later years, he returned to Broadway, reprising his role in the stage version of “Driving Miss Daisy.” He also returned to previous characters. He voiced Mufasa for a remake of “The Lion King” and played the king in a sequel , “Coming to America 2.” That was his final film credit.
James Earl Jones’s voice will live on —not just in his many recorded performances , but also in future Star Wars films. Two years before his death, he worked with his representatives to sign over the rights to his voice to Lucasfilms. Now, artificial intelligence will be able to recreate his voice as Darth Vader in future Star Wars films.
Jeff’s take
And you know there will be future Star Wars films! As long as movies are a thing, there will be more Star Wars movies.
If you want to hear his voice, I’ll put a link to a good CNN report about his life in the transcripts in the section called “Jeff’s take.”
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