James Earl Jones, legendary actor with distinctive baritone voice, dies at the age of 93

Jones, now a father, continued to work steadily throughout the 1980s.

Chong recalled the first day she met Jones on the set of “Soul Man” and was intimidated like a girl who grew up with “Star Wars.”

“The whole cast was a little bit scared of him, not just because he was this towering actor who was Othello in New York and his story,” Chong said. “But in reality he turned out to be a gentle giant, extremely generous. He's very kind and soft-spoken.”[turnedouttobe[agentlegiantextremelygenerousHe'sverykindandsoft-spoken”[turnedouttobe[agentlegiantextremelygenerousHe’sverykindandsoft-spoken”

Jones was in his mid-50s and past his sell-by date for leading roles. He amassed an impressive list of supporting roles, including roles in Field of Dreams (1987), Matewan (1987) and The Hunt for Red October (1990), a role he reprised in two sequels.

Perhaps his most famous role of the decade – not counting The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi (1983), of course – was that of Eddie Murphy’s father in the 1988 comedy Coming to America.

“You have to remember that 'Coming to America' was the biggest black film of its time,” Morales said. “It was the 'Black Panther' of this era.”

He also kept one foot on the stage, receiving his second Tony Award in 1987 for August Wilson's “Fences” – a role that Denzel Washington would play in a film version 29 years later.

In 1990, Jones was cast in the lead role in the television drama Gabriel's Fire. This kind of signature role would have been more well-received if the series had aired on a premium cable channel two decades later. At the time, however, TV executives considered the material too dark and canceled the series after just one season.

Jacqueline Zambrano, co-creator of the show, recalled being called to meet with Jones during a break in filming to discuss a script. In most cases, that meant the star diva-like demand for rewrites. “I would sit down and immediately open my notebook and have my pen ready,” Zambrano said. “He would start talking about a particular scene and asking me questions. Then we would move on to another scene and, you know, we would talk as long as we could until they were ready for him on set.

“We both left, and I looked at my notebook and I hadn't written anything down. He had no notes. He wasn't going to tell me, 'I want to correct this.' He just wanted to understand the text. He just wanted to understand the character better.”

Jones shone enough in that limited time to win his first Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Actor. (He won a second Emmy the same night for his supporting role in the TV movie “Heat Wave,” about the Watts race riots of 1965.)

In 1994, Jones voiced Mufasa in Disney's animated blockbuster The Lion King. 25 years later, he returned to the role in the live-action film, making him the only actor from the original voice cast to return to the role.

Over the next three decades, Jones continued to work steadily – even after being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1995. He garnered Emmy nominations for guest appearances on “Picket Fences,” “Under One Roof,” “Frasier” and “Everwood.” On Broadway, he received two more Tony nominations – for a production of “On Golden Pond” in 2005 and for a revival of Gore Vidal's “The Best Man” seven years later.

In 2011, Jones received an honorary Oscar for his entire career. The fact that he never won an Oscar for a specific film role and was thus denied the coveted EGOT is a lasting symbol of how underappreciated he was throughout his prolific and profound career.

Taylor, the UCLA professor, always shows a clip of Jones in the 1987 production of “Fences” in his acting master classes.

“He had a gigantic presence, but he was such a good, precise and sensitive actor on stage,” Taylor said. “It was beautiful to watch him work.”