John Christopher Jones, an actor whose more than a dozen Broadway credits include David Rabe’s Hurlyburly, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and the 19
John Christopher Jones, an actor whose more than a dozen Broadway credits include David Rabe’s Hurlyburly, Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and the 1993 musical adaptation of The Goodbye Girl, died September 15 in New York from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 77.
His death was announced on social media by his wife, MaryBeth Coudal, whose post noted that despite the challenge of battling Parkinson’s for more than 22 years, Jones “never allowed his diminishing abilities to dampen his extraordinary creative output and unwavering enthusiasm for the theater.”
Born into what Coudal describes as a theatrical family in Greenfield, Mass., Jones later studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in the early 1970s and was a founding member of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Mass.
Jones made his Broadway debut in 1975 in a production of Anthony Scully’s Little Black Sheep, returning two years later in Simon Gray’s Otherwise Engaged, directed by Harold Pinter. Subsequent Broadway credits include Hurlyburly, directed by Mike Nichols; The Goodbye Girl, directed by Gene Saks; Democracy, directed by Michael Blakemore; and Beauty and the Beast, directed by Rob Roth.
Among his many Off Broadway credits are Aristocrats by Brian Friel, Tartuffe by Molière, Gray’s Quartermaine’s Terms, Tony Kushner’s Slavs!, Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire and Sight Unseen by Donald Margulies.
Jones, who also directed Off Broadway and translated such classics as Turgenev’s A Month in the Country and Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard, also appeared in movies and television series, including the films Moonstruck, In & Out and Awakenings. On TV, he appeared in episodes of The Sopranos and New Amsterdam, among others, and was a series regular in the sitcoms On Our Own (1977) and The Popcorn Kid (1987).
‘The Popcorn Kid’ (from left): Faith Ford, Penelope Ann Miller, Bruce Norris, John Christopher Jones, Willie Dawson and Raye Birk
CBS / Courtesy: Everett Collection
Jones was featured in Jim Bernfield’s 2021 documentary Me to Play, which chronicled the challenges faced by Jones and his friend and fellow actor Dan Moran – both were battling Parkinson’s – as they attempted to stage Samuel Beckett’s Endgame Off Broadway.
According to his wife, Jones was writing a memoir at the time of his death. In addition to Coudal, he is survived by children Hayden Coudal Jones, Catherine Elizabeth Jones, and Charlotte “Char” Louise Jones.
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