James Earl Jones, who has died aged 93, was a massively accomplished and distinguished African American star of the stage and screen, an Egot titan and a great interpreter of classical and modern roles from Shakespeare to Eugene O’Neill and August Wilson. How he looked – magisterial, masculine, commanding – was of course a key to his success.
But it was how he sounded which made him a legend. That great rumbling basso profundo was like a thunderstorm surmounting the horizon, an almost supernatural voice of wisdom and power, which made generations of moviegoers from the 70s to the 90s tremble in the presence of a father figure, good and bad.
