Theater, film, and television actor James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader in the Star Wars trilogy, has passed away at the age of 93. This was reported by Variety.
James Earl Jones has been nominated for four Tony Awards and won two: in 1969 for his role as boxer Jack Johnson in the film The Great White Hope and in 1987 for his role as Troy Maxon in the Pulitzer Prize-winning drama Fences.
He has been nominated for eight Emmy Awards, winning twice in 1991, for his supporting role in the miniseries Heat Wave and for his lead role in the drama series Gabriel’s Fire, about an unjustly imprisoned ex-cop who becomes a private investigator.
Jones received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2002, the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2009, an honorary Oscar in 2011, and a Tony Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2017.
Of course, Jones’s most famous role is as the voice of Darth Vader in the 1977 film Star Wars: A New Hope” in 1977, but he refused to include his name in the credits in the first two films of the first trilogy out of respect for the actor who played the role on screen, David Prowse.
He returned to the voice of Vader in the 2005 films Episode III – Revenge of the Sith and Rogue One. Star Wars. A History in 2016, but for the Obi-Wan Kenobi series in 2022, Jones allowed Lucasfilm to use archival recordings and artificial intelligence technology to recreate Vader’s voice.
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