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You can’t think of James Earl Jones without hearing his voice.

That thundering basso profundo, at once dignified or menacing, was Jones’ signature instrument. It gave power to all his roles on stage and in film, most indelibly as Darth Vader in “Star Wars,” Mufasa in “The Lion King” and as the voice of CNN.

That remarkable voice is just one of the many things the world will miss about the beloved actor, who died Monday, according to his agent. He was 93.

Jones was surrounded by his family when he died, his representative said. No cause of death was shared.

“From the gentle wisdom of Mufasa to the brooding menace of Darth Vader, James Earl Jones gave voice to some of the greatest characters in cinematic history,” Bob Iger, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, said in a statement. “A celebrated actor with nearly 200 film and television credits to his name, the stories he brought to life with a unique, commanding presence and true wealth of spirit have left an indelible impression on generations of audiences.”

Jones had an impressive career that spanned some 60 years and took him from a small-town theater in northern Michigan to the top of Hollywood.

In the mid-1970s, Star Wars creator George Lucas cast British actor David Prowse as the man in the black suit of Darth Vader, but decided he wanted someone else to voice the character.

“George thought he wanted a, forgive the expression, darker voice,” Jones once told the American Film Institute. “I got lucky.”

At the time, no one expected “Star Wars” to become a box office hit, let alone an enduring franchise and cultural phenomenon. Jones recorded all of his lines in a few hours and was not listed in the film’s credits. He said he was paid just $7,000 for the film, “and I thought that was good money.”

The actor and Lucas disagreed about how he should voice the villain Vader.

“I wanted to make Darth Vader more interesting, more subtle, more psychologically oriented,” Jones said. “He (Lucas) said, ‘No, no … you have to keep his voice to a very narrow band of intonation, because he’s not human.'”

The climactic duel between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill, in 1980’s “The Empire Strikes Back” became a dramatic high point in the “Star Wars” series – punctuated by Jones’ delivery of one of the most famous lines in cinematic history: “No, I “I am your father!”

Hamill released a statement Monday, writing on Instagram: “One of the world’s finest actors whose contributions to ‘Star Wars’ were immeasurable. He will be deeply missed. #RIP Dad.”

Jones said that nearly two decades later, when he provided the voice of the dignified Mufasa for the Disney animated film “The Lion King,” it took him a while to find the right tone.

“My first mistake was trying to make him royal,” Jones said of the 1994 film. “And what they really needed was something that was more like me. “They said, ‘What are you like as a father?’ and I said, ‘Well, I’m a really dumb father.'”

He continued: “And so they started forcing my facial expressions on Mufasa, and a different tone of voice. Yes, he was authoritative, but he was just a gentle father.”

Jones was born in 1931 in Mississippi. His father, Robert Earl Jones, left the family before James was born to become an actor in New York and Hollywood, where he worked with playwright Langston Hughes and eventually landed supporting roles in successful films including “The Sting.”

Jones’ family moved from Mississippi to Michigan when he was 5, a traumatic upheaval that left him with a stutter. His fear of speaking left him nearly mute until he reached high school, where a poetry teacher helped him overcome his disability by encouraging him to read his poems aloud.

“He began to challenge me, to push me to start talking again … to recognize and appreciate the beauty of words,” Jones said.

Jones studied drama at the University of Michigan, served as an Army Ranger, and then moved to New York, where he soon landed leading roles in Shakespeare plays. He made his film debut in 1964 as a bomber in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.”

In 1967, Jones was cast as the troubled boxer Jack Johnson in a stage production of “The Great White Hope,” a career-defining role that earned him a Tony. He reprised the role three years later in the film adaptation, becoming the second African-American man, after Sidney Poitier, to be nominated for an Academy Award.

By the mid-1970s, Jones was working steadily in films and on TV — a prolific run that never slowed. Over the next five decades, he appeared in many memorable roles: as Alex Haley on the TV series “Roots: The Next Generations,” warlord Thulsa Doom on “Conan the Barbarian,” an African king in “Coming to America,” Kevin Costner’s reluctant recruit in “Field of Dreams,” Admiral Greer in “The Hunt for Red October” and “Patriot Games,” and a South African preacher in “Cry, the Beloved Country.”

Costner recalled his “booming voice,” “quiet strength” and “kindness” in a statement on Instagram Monday.

“There’s so much that can be said about his legacy, so I’ll just say how grateful I am that ‘Field of Dreams’ is a part of it. If you’ve seen it, you know this movie wouldn’t be the same with anyone else in his role,” he wrote. “Only he could bring that kind of magic to a movie about baseball and an Iowa cornfield. I’m grateful I got to witness him make that magic happen.”

Jones continued to work into old age.

In 2021, Jones reprised his role as King Jaffe Joffer in “Coming 2 America,” the highly anticipated sequel to the 1988 classic. His last credit, according to IMDb, was voicing Darth Vader in the 2022 Disney+ miniseries “Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

In 2019, he reprised the voice of Mufasa in Disney’s remake of “The Lion King,” becoming the only cast member to reprise his role from the first film.

Over the years, he also guest-starred on dozens of TV series, from “LA Law” to “Sesame Street,” appeared frequently on stage and lent his deep, rumbling voice to everything from “The Simpsons” to a popular audio recording of the King James Version of the Bible.

Jones said that sometimes people didn’t recognize him in public until they heard his voice.

“If you don’t talk, it’s like you become a ninja,” he told Rachael Ray in 2016. “You get in the cab and you tell him where you’re going and the guy turns around and says, ‘Hey, aren’t you the Darth Vader guy?’”

He also lent his voice to CNN’s slogan, “This is CNN,” complete with a dramatic pause after “This…”

A CNN spokesperson said in a statement Monday that Jones “was the voice of CNN and our brand for many decades, and he uniquely conveyed instant authority, grace and decency through his speeches.”

“That remarkable voice is just one of the many things the world will miss about James,” the statement said.

During his long and productive career, Jones won three Tonys, two Emmys, a Grammy, a Golden Globe and numerous other awards.

“It wasn’t acting. It was language. It was speech,” he said when asked what had sparked his passion for acting. “It was something I had denied myself all those years (as a boy). I now had a great — an abnormal — appreciation for it.

“And the idea was that you could put on a play — like a Shakespeare play, or some other well-written play, Arthur Miller, whatever — and say things that you could never imagine saying, never think of saying in your own life,” he told the Academy of Achievement in 1996.

“You could say things like that! That’s still what it’s about, whether it’s movies or TV or whatever. That’s still what it’s about.”

This story has been updated with additional information.