John Christopher Jones Dead: 'Beauty And The Beast' Actor Was 77

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 & Compa