Very sad news to report today as it has been confirmed that James Earl Jones has died at the age of 93. The actor is best known for providing the iconic voice of Darth Vader throughout the Star Wars franchise, but that’s really only scratching the surface of his incredible legacy. A huge loss.
For an actor known for his deep, commanding voice, it’s interesting that he struggled with speaking at an early age. When he was just five years old, he was sent to live with his grandparents in Michigan. The experience was so traumatic that he developed a severe stutter that left him refusing to speak at all. “I was a stutterer. I couldn’t talk,” Jones explained. “So my first year of school was my first mute year, and then those mute years continued until I got to high school.” The actor credited his English teacher, Donald Crouch, with helping him overcome his stutter. Crouch discovered Jones wrote poetry and encouraged him to read it aloud to his class.
Jones took a liking to drama during his University years, and like many young actors, he got his start on the stage. He even won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his starring role in The Great White Hope and later reprised the role for the feature film adaptation. Jones made his film debut in Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, going on to appear in movies such as Claudine, The Greatest, Exorcist II: The Heretic, Conan The Barbarian, Coming to America, Field of Dreams, The Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Sneakers, The Sandlot, Clear and Present Danger, Coming 2 America, and so much more.
More to come…
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