On September 9th, the world lost one of the most impactful voices to grace the screens in our time, James Earl Jones. Having shaped two of the most iconic characters in world cinema, Mufasa from The Lion King, and Darth Vader from Star Wars, James Earl Jones was also a celebrated actor with multiple awards and famous roles throughout his decades-long career.
The Mufasa voice actor passed away at the age of 93, in his home in Pawling New York, surrounded by family and loved ones. The industry too, mourned James Earl Jones, and CNN, who he had a long-standing professional involvement with, issued a heartfelt statement “...(James Earl Jones) was the voice of CNN and our brand for many decades, uniquely conveying through speech instant authority, grace, and decorum. That remarkable voice is just one of many things the world will miss about James.”
Many celebrities also took to social media to pay their tributes, including Mark Hamill, who played Vader's son Luke Skywalker in Star Wars. The actor posted "RIP Dad" with a broken heart emoji as he shared a news report of the death of James Earl Jones. Apart from him, Star Trek actor LeVar Burton also paid tribute to Jones, saying "There will never be another of his particular combinations of graces”.
Apart from them, Crystal Minkoff, wife of The Lion King co-director Rob Minkoff, also posted a photo of James Earl Jones holding a statue of Mufasa alongside the words: “Rest in Power, Mr Jones. You made a young animator’s dream come true when you accepted the role of Mufasa.”
While he was commonly known as the Darth Vader voice actor, James Earl Jones was a phenomenal talent both in front of and behind the camera. During his illustrated acting career, Jones won three Tony awards including two Emmys and a Grammy, as well as an honorary Oscar in 2011 for lifetime achievement. This wasn’t his only stint with the Academy Awards however as in 1971, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor, and became only the second Black man after Sidney Poitier, to be considered for the said award.
Known to have a profound stutter as a child, James Earl Jones went on to become one of the most pioneering Black actors of his generation, with a versatile career spanning over 60 years in on-screen, on-stage, and voice acting. The Mufasa voice actor made his debut at Broadway in 1957 in Sunrise at Campobello, and worked steadily in his stage career before being introduced on screen with Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964). James Earl Jones then went on to star both on screen as well as on stage for decades to come, before he made his voiceover debut as Darth Vader in George Lucas' Star Wars: A New Hope in 1977.
Incidentally, what made James Earl Jones the most famous, were also in some way the projects that he last worked with. In 2019, he reprised his voice role of Mufasa for the CGI remake of The Lion King where he was the only original cast member to do so, and in 2022, he signed a deal with Lucasfilm, where he authorised archival recordings of his voice to be used in the future to artificially generate the voice of Darth Vader. This happened right after the production of the Disney+ miniseries Obi-Wan Kenobi where his voice was used via Respeecher software for Darth Vader.
With a voice that lent gravel and gravitas and performances that’d light up the screens and stages, James Earl Jones will be missed, and remembered for a very long time!