James Earl Jones, Renowned Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies at 93 

71st Tony Awards – Show – New York City, US, 11/06/2017 - James Earl Jones - Tony Lifetime Achievement. (Reuters)
71st Tony Awards – Show – New York City, US, 11/06/2017 - James Earl Jones - Tony Lifetime Achievement. (Reuters)
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James Earl Jones, Renowned Actor and Voice of Darth Vader, Dies at 93 

71st Tony Awards – Show – New York City, US, 11/06/2017 - James Earl Jones - Tony Lifetime Achievement. (Reuters)
71st Tony Awards – Show – New York City, US, 11/06/2017 - James Earl Jones - Tony Lifetime Achievement. (Reuters)

American actor James Earl Jones, an imposing stage and screen presence who overcame a childhood stutter to develop a stentorian voice recognized the world over as intergalactic villain Darth Vader, died on Monday at the age of 93.

Jones, a longtime sufferer of diabetes, died at his home surrounded by family members, his agent, Barry McPherson, said.

No cause of death was provided.

Jones had a great physical presence on stage and television, as well as in movies, but he would have been a star even if his face was never seen because his voice had a career of its own. The resonating bass could instantly command respect - as with the sage father Mufasa in "The Lion King," and many Shakespeare roles - or instill fear as the rasping Vader in the "Star Wars" films.

Jones laughed when a BBC interviewer asked if he resented being so closely tied to Darth Vader, a role that required only his voice for a few lines while another actor did the on-screen work in costume.

"I love being part of that whole myth, of that whole cult," he said, adding that he was glad to oblige fans who asked for a command recital of his "I am your father" line to Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill.

"#RIP dad," Hamill wrote on X on Monday with a broken heart emoji above a story about the death of Jones.

Jones said he never made much money off the Darth Vader part - only $9,000 for the first film - and that he considered it merely a special effects job. He did not even ask to be in the credits of the first two "Star Wars" movies.

His long list of awards included Tonys for "The Great White Hope" in 1969 and "Fences" in 1987 on Broadway and Emmys in 1991 for "Gabriel's Fire" and "Heat Wave" on television. He also won a Grammy for best spoken word album, "Great American Documents" in 1977.

Although he never won a competitive Academy award, he was nominated for best actor for the film version of "The Great White Hope" and was given an honorary Oscar in 2011.

He began his movie career playing Lieutenant Luther Zogg in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 classic "Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb."

Later acclaimed movie roles included novelist Terence Mann in 1989's "Field of Dreams" and South African Reverend Stephen Kumalo in 1995's "Cry, the Beloved Country." He also starred in "Conan the Barbarian,Coming to America,The Sandlot,Matewan,The Hunt for Red October" and "Field of Dreams," among others.

Jones also was heard in dozens of television commercials and for several years CNN used his authoritative "This is CNN" to introduce its newscasts.

ESTRANGED FROM FATHER

James Earl Jones was born on January 17, 1931, in the tiny community of Arkabutla, Mississippi, to a family with a mixed ethnic background of Irish, African and Cherokee.

His father, prizefighter-turned-actor Robert Earl Jones, left the family shortly afterward. James was raised by his maternal grandparents, who forbade him to see his father, and the two did not get together until James moved to New York in the 1950s. Eventually they appeared in several plays together.

Jones was about 5 years old when his grandparents moved the family from Mississippi to a farm in Michigan and it was around that time that he quit speaking because of his stutter.

He was mostly silent for a decade until a ploy by his high school English teacher got him to speak up. The teacher made Jones recite to the class a poem that he said he had written to prove he was familiar enough with it to be the author.

Although after that he said he still had to choose his words carefully, Jones learned to control his stutter and became interested in acting.

After studying drama at the University of Michigan, he moved to New York, where his theater performances increasingly attracted critical attention and acclaim.

His breakthrough role on Broadway was "The Great White Hope," playing a character based on Black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. The play examined racism through the lens of the boxing world and critics raved about Jones' performance.

A popular theater draw for decades, his Shakespeare leading roles included Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello. He also had a notable portrayal of singer-actor-activist Paul Robeson on Broadway in 1977 and of author Alex Haley in the television mini-series "Roots: The Next Generation."

He was "capable of moving in seconds from boyish ingenuousness to near-biblical rage and somehow suggesting all the gradations in between," the Washington Post wrote in a 1987 review of "Fences."

Jones' first wife was Julienne Marie Hendricks, one of his "Othello" co-stars. Earl and his second wife, actress Cecilia Hart, who died in 2016, had one child, Flynn Earl Jones.

Jones was a trailblazing Black actor, winning big roles in racially charged movies and plays that broke ground for Black actors that came after him.

But Jones, who first found fame at the height of the Civil Rights movement in the 1960s and 1970s, largely kept himself out of direct action on matters of race.

In a 2013 interview with the Toronto Star, Jones said he imagined that a lot of people felt he was cowardly at the time for not using his fame and voice to more robustly support the cause. But the actor said he preferred to let his work do the talking for him.

"Don't get me wrong. I believe in the same things that all those people demonstrating believe in, but I just look for plays or movies that say the same thing and play characters in them," Jones told the Star.

Dominic Hawkins, a spokesperson for the NAACP in Washington, said Jones' winning of big roles even as the Jim Crow racial caste system still plagued the American South was hugely important for the Black community.

"That was his contribution to civil rights, his representation on screen and stage," Hawkins said. "Film and TV has the power to shape hearts and minds, and that's what he did."



China’s Jia Brings Film Spanning Love, Change over Decades to Busan

This picture taken on October 5, 2024 shows Chinese film director Jia Zhangke (L) and Chinese actress Zhao Tao (R) posing for photos during a press conference for the Gala Presentation "Caught by the Tides" at the 29th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in Busan. (Yonhap/AFP)
This picture taken on October 5, 2024 shows Chinese film director Jia Zhangke (L) and Chinese actress Zhao Tao (R) posing for photos during a press conference for the Gala Presentation "Caught by the Tides" at the 29th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in Busan. (Yonhap/AFP)
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China’s Jia Brings Film Spanning Love, Change over Decades to Busan

This picture taken on October 5, 2024 shows Chinese film director Jia Zhangke (L) and Chinese actress Zhao Tao (R) posing for photos during a press conference for the Gala Presentation "Caught by the Tides" at the 29th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in Busan. (Yonhap/AFP)
This picture taken on October 5, 2024 shows Chinese film director Jia Zhangke (L) and Chinese actress Zhao Tao (R) posing for photos during a press conference for the Gala Presentation "Caught by the Tides" at the 29th Busan International Film Festival (BIFF) in Busan. (Yonhap/AFP)

Chinese director Jia Zhangke's ambitious latest, which utilizes footage shot across two decades, offered a peek into the evolving nature of cinema as it unspooled at this year's Busan International Film Festival.

"Caught by the Tides" combines a story of elusive love with a panoramic portrayal of recent Chinese history using everything from low-resolution digital camera footage to a scene enhanced with cutting-edge AI technology.

And while it explores the meaning of the past, the film's creation emphasized innovation.

Jia assembled and recontextualized footage shot over more than 20 years, including unused scenes from previous films, newly filmed sequences, and random images he captured during his travels -- blending documentary and fiction.

The result, with a format reminiscent of Richard Linklater's 2014 film "Boyhood", creates a vivid record of time passing, particularly through lead actress Zhao Tao, Jia's long-time collaborator and wife in real life.

As she goes on a fruitless search for a lost love, audiences witness her age before their eyes.

The film also uses images related to key events that have shaped contemporary China, such as the successful bid for the 2008 Olympics and the construction of the Three Gorges Dam, which resulted in often overlooked suffering for those displaced by the project.

"After Covid, I felt that one era had ended and a new one was emerging," Jia told reporters in Busan when asked what motivated him to create "Caught by the Tides".

"With the rapid advancements in technology, including science, the Internet, and AI, people's lifestyles have also shifted. I realized that during this period of change, it was important to process the (accumulated) footage I had previously filmed."

Actress Zhao described the film as a "truly precious gift."

"It has allowed me to document my 20s, 30s, and 40s through the medium of film, while also expressing the lives and struggles of many women through the character," she told reporters.

The film played over the weekend as part of BIFF's gala presentation section.

- Covid, cinema and AI -

Jia's feature debut, "Xiao Wu", earned the director BIFF's New Current Award for emerging filmmakers in 1998, when he was just 28.

"It's not an exaggeration to say that my life as a filmmaker started in Busan," Jia said, adding he had missed the South Korean port city since his last visit.

He has since won the top prize at the Venice Film Festival for "Still Life" (2006), among other prestigious awards, establishing himself as one of the most important Chinese filmmakers of his generation.

"Jia stood out as someone who is obviously talented. He was, above all else, original," Kim Dong-ho, the 87-year-old BIFF founder, told AFP of the Chinese filmmaker's younger years.

Now 54, Jia has brought his latest film to Busan at a pivotal moment of change for the festival.

BIFF's opening night featured a streaming title for the first time in its history, and it hosted a day-long conference just on the theme of AI in content production.

At the festival's main venue, giant posters of Netflix's latest streaming projects underlined the shift -- including its opening film "Uprising," positioned next to a festival gift store that ironically proclaimed: "Theater is Not Dead."

Jia's film, by its end, reflects and evokes these changes and what may lie ahead, showing its characters queuing for PCR tests and wearing masks during the Covid pandemic, an era that contributed to the rise of streaming platforms worldwide.

One scene was modified using AI technology, changing the film that the protagonist watches to create a stronger link to an element introduced later in the story -- robots.

When reflecting on his some 26 years in film, Jia said: "It feels like I've been drifting in an endless ocean."

But "completing each film made me feel like I stood tall, having overcome the waves."