Actor James Earl Jones, an impressive stage and screen presence whose commanding voice shaped the Star Wars villain Darth Vader, has died. He was 93 years old.

Jones, who had suffered from diabetes for many years, died at home on Monday, said his agent Barry McPherson. He was surrounded by his family.

Pioneer Jones, who became one of the first African-American actors in a recurring role on a soap opera (As the World Turns) in 1965 and worked into his 80s, won two Emmys, a Golden Globe, two Tony Awards, a Grammy, the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. He also received an honorary Oscar and a special Tony for lifetime achievement. In 2022, a Broadway theater was renamed in his honor.

Jones’ deep, commanding voice also defined his career. In addition to being the voice of Darth Vader, he also voiced King Mufasa in the Disney version of The Lion King (1994 and 2019) and could be heard announcing the network’s newscasts with “This is CNN.”

Jones laughed when asked in a BBC interview if he resented being so closely associated with Darth Vader, a role for which David Prowse donned the costume on screen.

“I love being part of this whole myth, this whole cult,” he said, adding that he was happy to oblige his fans when they asked him to recite his line “I am your father” to Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill.

“#RIP dad,” Hamill wrote on X on Monday with a broken heart emoji above a story about Jones’ death.

Star Wars producer Lucasfilm said it was “deeply saddened” by the news of Jones’ death.

“The menacing baritone he brought to Darth Vader will be loved by fans forever and regarded as one of the greatest villain portrayals in cinema,” company president Kathleen Kennedy said in a statement. “His commanding presence on screen and his warm personality off it will be greatly missed.”

Jones said he never made much money playing Darth Vader – just $9,000 for the first film – and he viewed it as merely a special effects job. He didn’t even ask to be credited in the first two Star Wars films.

“A heartbreaking pain”

Earl Jones was born on January 17, 1931, by the light of an oil lamp in a cabin in segregated Mississippi. His father had already left the family to become a boxer and later an actor. When the boy was six years old, his mother took him to her parents’ farm in Michigan.

“For me, a world was ending, the safe world of childhood,” Jones wrote in his autobiography. “The move from Mississippi to Michigan was supposed to be a glorious event. For me, it was a heartbreaking moment, and not long afterward, I began to stutter.”

Too embarrassed to speak, Jones remained virtually mute for years, communicating with teachers and classmates through handwritten notes until a compassionate teacher helped him regain his voice.

“I couldn’t get enough of talking, debating, speaking – of acting,” he recalls in his book.

Jones switched to acting after failing his medical exams at university. After his military service, he moved to New York to live with his father in the 1950s and entered the American Theater Wing’s young actor program. The two men worked as floor polishers to keep themselves afloat while they looked for acting jobs.

His breakout role on Broadway was in The Great White Hope, playing a character based on black heavyweight champion Jack Johnson. The play examined racism from the perspective of the boxing world, and critics loved Jones’ performance.

He was a popular theater magnet for decades, playing leading roles in Shakespeare’s works, including Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear and Othello.

His film career began in 1964 with Stanley Kubrick’s classic satire “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.”

Jones was a groundbreaking black actor who won major roles in racially charged films and plays, paving the way for the work of black actors after him.

Acclaimed film roles included novelist Terence Mann in Field of Dreams (1989) and South African Reverend Stephen Kumalo in Cry Out (1995). He also appeared in Coming to America and The Hunt for Red October.

Jones’ first wife was Julienne Marie Hendricks, a co-star in Othello. Earl and his second wife, actress Cecilia Hart, who died in 2016, had one child, Flynn Earl Jones.