Star Wars and Lion King legend James Earl Jones dies

James Earl Jones, the American actor known for being the voice of Darth Vader in Star Wars, has died at the age of 93, his agent has confirmed.

The US actor’s voice was also lent to the likes of Mufasa in Disney’s 1994 film The Lion King, various audiobooks and to CNN for its “This is CNN” tagline. During his career he won a host of different awards. He was one of the few entertainers to have won the EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony awards).

Jones starred in dozens of films including Field of Dreams, Coming To America and Conan the Barbarian. He was best known for giving the Star Wars supervillain Darth Vader his distinctive gravelly voice.

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Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, posted “#RIP Dad” with a broken heart emoji as he shared a news report of James Earl Jones’ death.

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