Hollywood legend James Earl Jones dies at 93

Hollywood legend James Earl Jones, who voiced Star Wars villains Darth Vader and Mufasa in The Lion King, died at 93.

Jones, a longtime sufferer of diabetes, died at his home surrounded by family members, his agent Barry McPherson said no cause of death was provided.

But it was his iconic voice as the villainous Darth Vader for which he was best known.

Jones was one of the few entertainers to have won the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards). 

Celebrities paid tribute to Jones, with Colman Domingo, who stars in the recently released Sing Sing, saying on X: “Thank you dear James Earl Jones for everything. A master of our craft.

“We stand on your shoulders. Rest now. You gave us your best.”

The Empire State Building posted an image from earlier this year of the landmark in New York being lit up with a striking image of Lord Vader as part of its Star Wars dynamic light show event.

Jones was the only member of The Lion King’s original voice cast to retain his role for the movie’s remake in 2019.

Fellow Star Wars actor Samuel L. Jackson previously said of him: “If you were an actor or aspired to be an actor, if you pounded the pavement in these streets looking for jobs, one of the standards we always had was to be a James Earl Jones.”

One of Jones’ earliest roles was a small part in Stanley Kubrick’s famous Cold War satire, Dr Strangelove.

His long list of awards included Tonys for The Great White Hope in 1969 Fences in 1987 on Broadway and Emmys in 1991 for Gabriel’s Fire and Heat Wave on television.

He also won a Grammy for best-spoken word album, Great American Documents in 1977.

Although he never won a competitive Academy Award, he was nominated for best actor for the film version of The Great White Hope and was given an honorary Oscar in 2011.

The late legendary Hollywood actor was “capable of moving in seconds from boyish ingenuousness to near-biblical rage and somehow suggesting all the gradations in between,” the Washington Post wrote in a 1987 Fences review.

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