James Earl Jones, acclaimed actor and voice of Darth Vader, dies at 93

Doing Darth Vader’s voice brought in commercial and voice-over work, Jones wrote in Voices and Silences, his 1993 autobiography. He admitted making many mediocre movies to help “subsidize” his work on stage, where, he said, “you don’t make much money, even on Broadway.”

He won a Tony award for best actor as the boxer Jack Jefferson in The Great White Hope, which opened in 1968, a role he reprised in the 1970 film version to earn an Oscar nomination. He acted in about 20 other Broadway plays, from Othello to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and performed Driving Miss Daisy in London’s West End as well as on Broadway.

An actor’s job onstage “is to fill the whole space with sound, movement, emotion, animal presence and energy,” Jones wrote in his memoir. The opposite works better in film, he said, where acting must be subtle and suggestive.