With James Earl Jones, there was always the voice. It rumbled. It flowed over you, thick as molasses. It sounded regal, even when he was playing a lowly ex-baseball player instead of a king. It was always unmistakably his — he wasn’t even credited as the voice of Darth Vader in the first two seasons Star Wars films, but of course everyone knew it — but remarkably versatile within what could have been a limited basso profundo range. He could be the epitome of evil as Vader, a clear figure of goodness and reason as King Mufasa in The Lion Kingor a sign of the value of journalism and democracy as the man who declared “This… is CNN” in a ubiquitous series of promos. The voice made such an impression that when Luke Skywalker removed Vader’s helmet at the end of Return of the JediMany spectators were shocked to see the face of older, white English actor Sebastian Shaw, instead of Jones’ own striking face. (Or that of any other black performer.)

In almost every other live-action role Jones played during his long and distinguished career, the voice went hand in hand with the body it came from. Jones took up space in every possible way. He was 6’2” and wide as a barn, even when he was young and slim enough to play fighter Jack Johnson in his breakthrough role in The Great White Hope. Actors are generally smaller than you think, so Jones had a tendency to tower over his fellow actors both physically and verbally. And when he wanted to — when he was allowed to, in a career that made him a global icon but was in many ways far more limited than his talents deserved — he could blow people off the screen with his fundamental dramatic or comedic gifts as a performer, regardless of his size and voice.

With the news that Jones has died at the age of 93, thoughts naturally turn first to that voice: to the one who almost purrs when Vader tells a subordinate, “I find your lack of faith disturbing,” or to him in Field of dreams solemnly explaining that baseball “reminds us what was once good, and how it could be good again.” But by limiting the discussion to that great instrument, we trivialize the other talents, and the overall legacy, of a man who was a giant in so many senses of the word.

By now, you probably know a bit of Jones’ origin story, including the fact that this golden-voiced man had such a severe stutter as a child that he was too embarrassed to introduce himself to strangers. He overcame that struggle through his art (beginning with reading poetry aloud in high school English class) and eventually became a respected Broadway actor; his film debut came in Doctor Strangelove came about when director Stanley Kubrick came to see George C. Scott in a production of The Merchant of Veniceand was taken with Scott’s imposing young co-star. In 1968, he won a Tony for the original stage production of The Great White Hopesubsequently became the second black nominee, after Sidney Poitier, for the Best Actor Oscar when the film was adapted into a film in 1970.

That imposing screen presence proved to be a double-edged sword throughout Jones’ screen career, but especially early on. He wasn’t classically handsome like Poitier — though he could be swaggering and magnetic in films like the baseball comedy The Bingo Long Traveling All-Stars & Motor Kings —so leading roles were harder to come by. But he was such a striking subject, and so charismatic, that there was often a risk that he would overshadow any actor who was asked to be near him. Because of his stage background, and because his voice and bearing could make him seem so patrician, he was often lured into the same trap as the black stars who followed him, like Morgan Freeman: too often he was hired for the authority and dignity he exuded, rather than because a filmmaker had a complex character they wanted Jones to explore.

When given the chance to play men instead of symbols, Jones was a wonder to behold.

Field of dreams was the middle of a trio of classic baseball films he appeared in over the years (the other was The sandbox). As is so often the case, it’s not his movie. Kevin Costner is the star, he gets the big emotional arc, gets to play catch with the ghost of his dead father while crying, gets to be a movie star in the best way possible, etc. And Jones absolutely steals the movie from under him.

In the book Field of dreams was based on, Joe without shoesCostner’s character Ray Kinsella is recruiting Catcher in the Rye author J.D. Salinger to help him in his quest to bring some magic to a baseball field in an Iowa cornfield. Salinger threatened to sue if his name was used in the film, so writer/director Phil Alden Robinson had to create a character who would convincingly inspire a similar level of awe. Much of this was accomplished by having James Earl Jones, of all people, play author Terence Mann. But Robinson and Jones also allowed Mann to be hilariously prickly (“I’m going to beat you with a crowbar until you go away,” the exasperated author tells Ray during their first meeting), palpably weary of a legacy he never asked for, and genuinely excited to see the ghosts of Shoeless Joe Jackson and Mel Ott play a game for him. So when Robinson’s camera zooms in, James Horner’s score shoots up and Mann begins his speech about the beauty and value of baseball

Everett Collection The one part of the speech and the film that never quite clicked, mainly because the characters Jones played Bingo Long And

The sandbox

were both modeled after legendary Negro Leagues slugger Josh Gibson: all the ballplayers given a chance by Ray’s pitch are white, rather than men like Gibson who were barred from playing against the likes of Shoeless Joe because of the color of their skin. And a character embodied by Jones delivers this paean to baseball’s purity without even a subtle nod to that fact. Like many other great actors who repeatedly found leading roles in films, Jones tried his hand at television several times, becoming the rare actor to win two Emmys in the same year, in 1991, for a TV movie about the Watts riots called Heat waveand for the leading role in Gabriel’s Firea short-lived private detective drama about a man released from prison after serving 20 years for a murder he didn’t commit. From his first Emmy-nominated role (as a financially struggling husband and father confronted with a family tragedy in the 1960s social work drama Eastside West Wide) until his last (as a coal miner and jazz pianist in a few episodes of the early August family drama

Everwood ), he gave everything that was asked of him. Gabriel’s Firewas a rare case of executives looking at Jones in the role of a serious actor and wondering if they should make him funnier; after the first season, it was retooled into a much lighter series called Pros and conswith Jones and Richard Crenna playing the same characters. This version only lasted half a season, however, and made it harder for Jones to put on his metaphorical fool’s hat again in the future. But he found opportunities to play with his own image whenever possible. In the second episode ever of Sesame Streethe recited the alphabet in his familiar stentorian tones. He voiced Maggie Simpson in an episode of “Treehouse of Horror” and adapted his tendency to be cast as authority figures by playing the boss in the “Mathnet” segments of the public television math show Square one . In the early 1990s, he did a series of TV ads for the Bell Telephone Yellow Pages, each script clearly written with the knowledge of who would say the lines like, “This is the book that made Bubba cook.” And Mufasa wasn’t even the first African monarch Jones played, since The Lion Kingwas preceded by his villainous role as the arrogant King Jaffe Joffer in Eddie Murphy’s charming 1988 film

. TrendingHe reprised the role in the 2021 sequel Coming soon to Americabut most of his final screen credits were voice-only, including reprising Mufasa in CGI Lion King and Father in various Star Wars movies and shows. The last of which, in 2022’s Obi-Wan Kenobi series, is credited to Jones, but he didn’t actually work on it; at the time, he had the rights for Lucasfilm to digitally recreate his voice for future projects, and an AI program created the new Vader dialogue based on his previous work. Like much of that show, the Vader voice approximated what we knew from previous

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