Ron Cephas Jones was a veteran stage and screen actor who won two Emmy Awards for his role on the NBC drama series This Is Us. AP
Ron Cephas Jones was a veteran stage and screen actor who won two Emmy Awards for his role on the NBC drama series This Is Us. AP
Ron Cephas Jones was a veteran stage and screen actor who won two Emmy Awards for his role on the NBC drama series This Is Us. AP
Ron Cephas Jones was a veteran stage and screen actor who won two Emmy Awards for his role on the NBC drama series This Is Us. AP

Ron Cephas Jones, This Is Us actor who won two Emmys, dies aged 66


  • English
  • Arabic

Ron Cephas Jones, a veteran stage actor who won two Emmy Awards for his role as a long-lost father who finds redemption on the NBC television drama series This Is Us, has died at age 66, a representative said Saturday.

Jones' manager, Dan Spilo, said the actor had died “due to a long-standing pulmonary issue.”

“Throughout the course of his career, his warmth, beauty, generosity, kindness and heart were felt by anyone who had the good fortune of knowing him,” Spilo said.

Jones had a double lung transplant in 2020 because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and spent nearly two months in a Los Angeles hospital.

On This Is Us, Jones played William “Shakespeare” Hill, a biological father whose life is renewed through his relationship with the family of his son Randall Pearson, played by Sterling K Brown.

“One of the most wonderful people the world has ever seen is no longer with us,” Brown said in an Instagram post after Jones' death. “The world is a little less bright. Brother, you are loved. And you will be missed.”

Jones played a more central role in the series' early seasons, but appeared in some form in all six seasons of the show, which included time-jumping narratives offering recurring opportunities for its actors even after their characters' deaths.

Jones won Emmys for best guest actor in a drama series in 2018 and 2020 and was nominated for two more.

“Ron was the best of the best – on screen, on stage, and in real life,” This Is Us creator Dan Fogelman said on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter. “My God: what an actor. I don't think I ever changed a single take of his in a cut because everything he did was perfect.”

Jones spent most of his career in the theatre before and after This Is Us, returning to Broadway even after his transplant forced him to learn to breathe and walk again.

“My whole life has been the stage,” Jones said in a late 2021 interview with the The New York Times, in which he revealed he had quietly been suffering from respiratory problems since about the time he began on This Is Us.

“The idea of not performing again seemed worse to me than death,” Jones said.

He was nominated for a Tony Award and won a 2022 Drama Desk Award for the Broadway role as a truck-stop cook in playwright Lynn Nottage's Clyde's.

A native of Paterson, New Jersey, Jones graduated from nearby Ramapo College, where he had intended to study jazz but switched to theatre during his sophomore year. He spent the late 1970s and early 1980s travelling the country, working as a bus driver in Southern California for several years.

In the mid 1980s he moved to New York, where his career got a jump-start when he began hanging out and collaborating at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a vital creative hub for poetry, hip-hop and the performing arts.

A breakout role came in 1994, when he landed the lead in playwright Cheryl West's drama, Holiday Heart.

He would spend the ensuing decades constantly in the theatre, often in off-Broadway plays in New York, including a title turn as Shakespeare's Richard III at The Public Theatre, and in roles with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company in Chicago.

Jones also had TV guest stints on Mr Robot, Luke Cage and Lisey's Story.

His film appearances included 2006's Half Nelson with Ryan Gosling and 2019's Dolemite Is My Name with Eddie Murphy.

He is survived by his daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones.

MATCH INFO

Champions League last 16, first leg

Tottenham v RB Leipzig, Wednesday, midnight (UAE)

Tips for job-seekers
  • Do not submit your application through the Easy Apply button on LinkedIn. Employers receive between 600 and 800 replies for each job advert on the platform. If you are the right fit for a job, connect to a relevant person in the company on LinkedIn and send them a direct message.
  • Make sure you are an exact fit for the job advertised. If you are an HR manager with five years’ experience in retail and the job requires a similar candidate with five years’ experience in consumer, you should apply. But if you have no experience in HR, do not apply for the job.

David Mackenzie, founder of recruitment agency Mackenzie Jones Middle East

Russia's Muslim Heartlands

Dominic Rubin, Oxford

Conflict, drought, famine

Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.

Band Aid

Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.

GAC GS8 Specs

Engine: 2.0-litre 4cyl turbo

Power: 248hp at 5,200rpm

Torque: 400Nm at 1,750-4,000rpm

Transmission: 8-speed auto

Fuel consumption: 9.1L/100km

On sale: Now

Price: From Dh149,900

Updated: August 20, 2023, 4:10 AM`