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James Earl Jones, the American actor known for voicing Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise and Mufasa in The Lion Kinghas died at the age of 93, it was announced on Monday.

The cause of death was not immediately released.

Jones was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in the mid-1990s. He announced it in 2016.

His death prompted an outpouring of tributes from figures including Mark Hamill, LeVar Burton, Octavia Spencer and Wendell Pierce.

During her illustrious career on stage and screen, Jones has received three Tony Awards, two Emmys and a Grammy.

He was born in the village of Arkabutla, Mississippi, on January 17, 1931, to parents of mixed African-American, Irish, and Native American descent. His mother was a teacher and maid, while his father was a boxer and actor, appearing in films such as The Sting (1973) and Trading places (1983).

From the age of five, Jones was raised by his maternal grandparents on their farm in Dublin, Michigan. He found the move so traumatic that he developed a severe stutter and was nearly mute for eight years. “In Sunday school, I would try to read my lessons and the kids behind me would fall on the floor laughing… By the time I got to school, my stutter was so bad that I gave up trying to speak properly,” Jones recalled in an interview with the Daily Mail.

He credited his high school English teacher with ending his silence after he was encouraged to read poetry in front of the class. “I’m not saying I’m ‘cured,'” he told NPR in 2014. “I’m just working with it.”

He attended the University of Michigan, where he dropped out of medical school in favor of acting, and while in college he faced racism. “There weren’t many black fellows at the University of Michigan,” Jones said during a 2005 lecture at the Oxonian Society. “A professor called me in to comment on a paper I had written. I had spelled simplicity as ‘simplisity.’ ‘Why are you trying to be someone you’re not?’ he said. ‘You’re a stupid son of an a** who doesn’t belong in college!’ I had no idea how to respond to such deep-seated racism.”

He then joined the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps and, after graduation, was assigned to the 38th Regimental Combat Team, where he led the establishment of a cold-weather training command in snowy Colorado. “I loved the stark beauty of the mountains and the excitement of the weather and the altitude. I had no trouble with the hardships of the work or the pioneer life. I found it a good life,” he later said.

After his discharge, Jones moved to New York City, where he took acting lessons at the American Theatre Wing and used his veterans’ benefits, while working as a janitor to support himself.

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His big breakthrough came in 1967 with The Great White Hopea play that premiered in Washington, D.C., and appeared on Broadway a year later. Jones played the title character, Jack Jefferson (modeled after Jack Johnson), a champion boxer who battles racism inside and outside the ring. He won a Tony Award for Best Actor for the role, and the story was later made into a film in which he also played the lead.The Great White Hope put me on the cover of Newsweek magazine,” he said. “One day that week, someone saw you.”

In 1977, Jones made his debut as the fearsome Sith Lord Darth Vader in George Lucas’ space opera blockbuster Star Wars: A New Hopea role for which he was paid only $7,000. He would reprise the role for the sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). Vader was played in costume by David Prowse (who died in 2020), with Jones dubbing the dialogue in post-production because Prowse’s strong British accent was deemed unsuitable by Lucas for the character.

From arch-villain, Jones transformed into archetypal father figure in 1994 when he lent his rumbling voice to the role of Mufasa in Disney’s The Lion KingHe returned to the role in 2019 for Jon Favreau’s live-action remake – the only original cast member to do so. Chiwetel Ejiofor, who voiced Mufasa’s evil brother Scar in the remake, said that “the comfort of (Jones reprising his role) is going to be so rewarding to take (audiences) on that journey again. It’s a once-in-a-generation vocal quality.”

Jones’s other notable film roles include Eddie Murphy’s Coming to America (1988), Field of dreams (1989), Doctor Strangelove (1964), Conan the Barbarian (1982) and The Hunt for Red October (1990). On television he voiced several characters in The Simpsons in three separate seasons and appeared in episodes of Law and order (1993), Frasier (1997), Two and a half men (2008), House (2009), and The Big Bang Theory (2014).

In 2016, Jones spoke publicly about his diagnosis of type 2 diabetes for the first time in nearly 20 years. “I didn’t have any symptoms,” Jones said. “I had gone on a diet and exercise program hoping to lose some weight and ended up falling asleep on a gym bench. My doctor, who happened to be there, said that’s not normal. He encouraged me to get tested, so I did — and there it was: type 2 diabetes. It hit me like a ton of bricks.”

He continued: “I can live to the extent that I can do all the work I did 10 years ago. I love working, and at my age I still love being able to do eight shows a week in a play or a long schedule if I’m doing film or television. I didn’t want that to stop, so I had to take responsibility for my condition.”

Even in death, Jones’s unmistakable baritone will live on. In 2022, he signed on to archival recordings of voices that would be manipulated for future versions of Darth Vader using artificial intelligence. “David Prowse worked very hard to create the character of Darth Vader. He is Vader. I just think of myself as a special effects guy,” Jones self-deprecatingly said in his 1993 memoir. “That’s the way I approach it. I just sat there and had fun playing my voice like an instrument.” What an instrument it was.

Among those paying tribute to Jones were Luke Skywalker actor Mark Hamill who tweeted: “#RIP dad,” and The thread actor Wendell Pierce, whose emotional message Jones described as “the only reason I became an actor.”

Jones is survived by his son Flynn Earl Jones. His second wife of 36 years, actor Cecilia Hart, died in 2016 of ovarian cancer.