John Christopher Jones, an actor with over a dozen Broadway credits, including Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, has died.
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Jones passed away on Sept. 15 in New York City due to complications from Parkinson’s disease, as announced by his friend Jeff Baron via The Hollywood Reporter.
He was 77.
His death was also announced on social media by his wife, MaryBeth Coudal. Her post noted that despite battling Parkinson’s for over 22 years, Jones “never allowed his diminishing abilities to dampen his extraordinary creative output and unwavering enthusiasm for the theater.”
Born into a theatrical family in Greenfield, Mass., Jones studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts in the early 1970s. He was also a founding member of Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, Massachusetts.
According to Playbill, Jones debuted on Broadway in 1975 with Anthony Scully’s Little Black Sheep and returned in 1977 for Simon Gray’s Otherwise Engaged, directed by Harold Pinter.
His other 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).
John Christopher Jones Also Appeared in Major Films and TV Shows
His many Off-Broadway credits include Brian Friel’s Aristocrats, Molière’s Tartuffe, Gray’s Quartermaine’s Terms, Tony Kushner’s Slavs!, David Lindsay-Abaire’s Fuddy Meers, and Donald Margulies’s Sight Unseen.
Jones also appeared in several films and TV series, including Moonstruck, In & Out, and Awakenings, per IMDb. On television, he had roles in The Sopranos and New Amsterdam, among others, and was a series regular in the sitcoms On Our Own (1977) and The Popcorn Kid (1987).
In 2021, Jones was featured in Jim Bernfield’s documentary Me to Play. The film chronicled his and fellow actor Dan Moran’s attempt to stage Samuel Beckett’s Endgame Off-Broadway while both battled Parkinson’s disease.
At the time of his death, Jones was writing a memoir, according to his wife. He is survived by Coudal and his children, Hayden Coudal Jones, Catherine Elizabeth Jones, and Charlotte “Char” Louise Jones.