Star Wars icon Mark Hamill paid a short and sweet tribute to the legendary James Earl Jones, the iconic voice behind Darth Vader in the hit sci-fi series, after Jones, surrounded by family members, died at 93.
Jones was perhaps best known for playing Darth Vader, forever immortalized in the climactic scene in which his character reveals he is the father of the formidable Luke Skywalker (Hamill).
Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Hamill summed his sweet relationship with Jones rather succinctly:
"#RIP dad [broken heart emoji]"
You can see his post below.
Those words said it all and people were undeniably moved by Hamill's post.
Meanwhile, other widely respected performers, including Kevin Costner, with whom Jones starred in the sports drama Field of Dreams, paid tribute to the late Jones.
Even NASA paid tribute to Jones with a nod to a memorable scene from The Lion King, in which Jones voiced Mufasa, where Mufasa speaks to the grieving Simba from the heavens above.
Jones shot to fame as the leading man in the play The Great White Hope, winning the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play. The play, which won the 1969 Tony Award for Best Play as well as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, was later adapted into a film for which Jones and leading lady Jane Alexander both received Academy Award nominations.
Jones later won the 1987 Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance in August Wilson's Fences. His work on television earned him three Emmy Awards (one for Best Supporting Actor in a Miniseries, one for Best Actor in a Drama Series, and another for Best Narrator. He won a Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
Jones also received an Academy Honorary Award in recognition of his decades of film work, becoming one of the few performers to attain coveted EGOT status, though this award was noncompetitive. In addition to Star Wars and The Great White Hope, he starred in and at times lent his voice to such classics as Claudine, Conan the Barbarian, Coming to America and its 2021 sequel, the aforementioned Field of Dreams and The Lion King, The Sandlot, and Cry, the Beloved Country.
His voice, rich and deep, was his ultimate calling card, however, and news junkies the world over recognize him as the voice behind the CNN tagline, "This is CNN," for which he left an indelible and timeless mark on the 24-hour news cycle.
