“No, I am your father”: Multi-talented actor James Earl Jones inspired fear in millions of movie fans with his sepulchral voice of Darth Vader in the saga Star Wars.
He died Monday at the age of 93, his agents announced.
“Rest in peace, Dad,” reacted on X actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in George Lucas’ intergalactic opera.
Beyond his voice acting roles, notably as Mufasa in The Lion Kingthe African-American actor, often sporting a chevron moustache, is known for his long career both on the silver screen and on stage.
However, nothing predestined him to become one of the most emblematic voices in the history of cinema: until he was 8 years old, the young James Earl Jones hardly spoke due to a severe stutter.
“Stuttering is painful. In catechism, I would try to read the lessons and the children behind me would roll on the floor laughing,” he told the Daily Mail.
Born in 1931 in Mississippi, a segregated state in the South, James Earl Jones moved with his family to Michigan, in the northern United States, at the age of 5.
He finally regained control of his speech through the recitation of poems, at the initiative of his English teacher, himself a poet.
Broadway
The young man is not yet considering an artistic vocation, but rather studying medicine, or even entering religious orders.
“I didn’t think I would be an actor. Even when I started studying acting, I imagined myself as a soldier. And the idea of being an actor didn’t come to me until almost the end of my military service,” James Earl Jones told PBS in 1998.
After completing his enlistment in the U.S. Army as a lieutenant, he moved to New York in the mid-1950s to pursue acting while working as a janitor at night. “I cleaned a lot of toilets,” he told NPR in 2014.
The actor made his Broadway debut in 1958 with the play Sunrise at Campobello at the Cort Theatre, renamed the James Earl Jones Theatre in 2022.
Between 1961 and 1964, he played in New York in The Blacksthe play by Jean Genet entitled The Negroes in French, alongside the poet Maya Angelou in particular.
Admiral and Sergeant Major
His first film role came with Dr. Strangelove by Stanley Kubrick, where he plays Lieutenant Zogg aboard a B-52 bomber.
The military theme will come back frequently in his filmography, notably through his role as Admiral Greer in the film saga Jack Ryan (In pursuit of Red October, War games, Immediate danger), or even a sergeant-major in Stone gardens by Francis Ford Coppola in 1987.
His first recognition in the industry came in 1969 with his victory at the Tony Awards, American theater awards, for his title role in the play The Insurgent.
It tells the true story of Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight champion, and the “great white hope” the white American public expected to dethrone him.
A critical success, the play was adapted into a film the following year. James Earl Jones reprised the role of Jack Johnson and his performance earned him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe win.
In total, the actor would be nominated four times for Tony Awards between 1969 and 2012, and would win two, as well as a special Tony for his entire career in 2017. The cinema also distinguished him in 2011 with an honorary Oscar.
“A darker voice”
His most iconic role would never see him appear on screen, however.
George Lucas, the creator of Star Warsin fact chose him, after considering Orson Welles, to play the voice of the man who would become the most famous villain in the history of cinema, Darth Vader.
“George wanted a darker voice. So he hired a guy who was born in Mississippi, raised in Michigan, who stutters, and that voice is me,” James Earl Jones said in a 2009 interview with the American Film Institute.
The actor initially did not want his name to appear in the credits of the first episodes of Star Warsbelieving that his work was more akin to special effects, and preferring that the recognition go to the actor behind the mask, David Prowse, according to the specialist magazine. Far Out.
Other prominent roles include playing King Jaffe Joffer in A Prince in New Yorkor the evil Thulsa Doom in Conan the Barbarian.