Ron Cephas Jones, a homeless heroin addict in his youth who grew to become an admired actor in New York theater and on a number of tv reveals together with “This Is Us,” a household drama for which he received two Emmy Awards, has died. He was 66.
The author and creator of “This Is Us,” Dan Fogelman, posted about Mr. Jones’s loss of life on X, the social media platform previously often known as Twitter. Mr. Jones’s supervisor, Dan Spilo, instructed The Related Press that Mr. Jones died from “a longstanding pulmonary challenge,” however didn’t specify the place and when he died.
Mr. Jones obtained a double-lung transplant in 2020, after years of dwelling with persistent obstructive pulmonary illness.
Mr. Jones was identified for taking part in characters who, like him, wrenched from previous experiences of private desperation a hard-won toughness and emotional vulnerability.
On “This Is Us,” which ran on NBC from 2016 till final 12 months and featured appearances from Mr. Jones in each season, he incessantly made speeches. He performed William “Shakespeare” Hill, a former drug addict with terminal most cancers who connects on the finish of his life with a son, Randall Pearson (performed by Sterling Okay. Brown), whom he had left exterior a fireplace station at delivery.
“On a collection with no scarcity of weepy story traces, William is a determine of singular pathos,” Reggie Ugwu wrote in a 2021 profile of Mr. Jones for The Occasions, including, “However Jones’s soulful efficiency — the weather-beaten forehead, the voice like brushed wool — confers a lived-in texture and depth.”
Mr. Jones told the Hollywood information web site Gold Derby in 2017, “I spotted that a lot of the person is inside me, and my historical past.”
For “This Is Us,” Mr. Jones obtained Emmy nominations for excellent supporting actor in a drama collection in 2017 and excellent visitor actor in a drama collection in 2018, 2019 and 2020. He received the visitor actor award in 2018 and 2020.
His most up-to-date star flip within the theater was in “Clyde’s,” which was written by Lynn Nottage and ran on Broadway from the autumn of 2021 to the winter of 2022. It involved a crew of ex-convicts working as sandwich makers at a truck cease. Mr. Jones performed Montrellous, an elder of the group who finds a ardour in his job that evokes his beleaguered colleagues.
The Occasions referred to as Mr. Jones “the present’s transfixing heart of gravity,” able to mixing “Zen imperturbability with refined dashes of ache and sacrifice.” He was nominated for a Tony Award for finest featured actor in a play and received awards from the Drama Desk and the Drama League.
In 2012, Mr. Jones performed the lead in a manufacturing of Shakespeare’s “Richard III” by the Public Theater that appeared in prisons and homeless shelters along with the corporate’s base close to Astor Place in Manhattan.
“No character in Shakespeare is as hungry for energy as Richard III,” Charles Isherwood wrote in a assessment for The Occasions. “And it’s laborious to think about an actor with a naturally hungrier look than Ron Cephas Jones, the tall, beanpole-thin, snakelike actor who portrays the title character.”
Mr. Isherwood stated Mr. Jones made “a strikingly sinister-looking Richard” and described his depiction of Richard’s lying as “hypnotically persuasive.”
Characterizing Mr. Jones’s place within the theater world, The Occasions labeled him in 2012 “a stalwart New York actor” equally snug taking part in Othello or Caliban as he was taking part in a serial killer in a recent drama set on Rikers Island.
Ron Cephas Jones was born on Jan. 8, 1957, in Paterson, N.J., the place he grew up. He graduated from Ramapo School with a theater diploma in 1978. In his youth, he had gone to Harlem to see jazz reveals and performs, and he returned to New York after graduating to discover a place within the artwork scene. He developed a heroin dependancy that stalled his ambitions.
He tried to get clear throughout a collection of strikes and profession modifications — for 4 years, he was a bus driver in Los Angeles — however for a very long time, nothing caught. At one level he was arrested with 10 small baggage of heroin and, he instructed The Occasions in 2021, he barely escaped serving a five-year jail sentence.
He relapsed many times, ultimately prompting his mom to cease answering his telephone calls. Within the mid-Nineteen Eighties, he slept on a bench in Paterson’s Eastside Park. An uncle invited Mr. Jones to stick with him at his Harlem residence. In 1986, he succeeded in sobering up. In 1990, he starred in his first play, “Don’t Clarify” by Samuel B. Harps, on the Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the Decrease East Aspect of Manhattan.
He had a daughter, Jasmine Cephas Jones, in 1989 with the jazz singer Kim Lesley. Ms. Jones additionally grew to become a profitable actress. Within the unique 2015 Broadway manufacturing of “Hamilton,” she performed Peggy Schuyler, Alexander Hamilton’s sister-in-law, and Maria Reynolds, his mistress. In 2020, she won an Emmy for her function within the internet collection “#FreeRayshawn.” In 2021, she and Mr. Jones introduced the Emmy nominations collectively.
A whole listing of survivors was not instantly out there.
Mr. Jones smoked two packs a day for many of his life, and he stored smoking even after his emphysema analysis.
“I used to be in whole denial,” he instructed The Occasions in 2021. “I instructed myself that it could go, or that I used to be simply getting older. I used to be afraid and didn’t need to change what I wasn’t prepared to alter.”
Different TV reveals through which he made notable appearances embody “Mr. Robotic,” “Luke Cage” and “Lisey’s Story.” New York Occasions critiques of his theater work had been normally enthusiastic. In 2012, Mr. Isherwood referred to as him “commandingly grave” in John Patrick Shanley’s play “Storefront Church,” and in 2015, Laura Collins-Hughes described his efficiency as Prospero in “The Tempest” as “transferring” and “understated.”
“He strikes by the world like a cool jazz man, however can also be beneficiant and a nurturer,” Ms. Nottage instructed The Occasions in 2021. “The identical qualities that he brings to his performing are the qualities that he embodies in actual life.”
He managed to evoke that sensibility in Ms. Nottage’s play regardless of having lately spent two months within the hospital recovering from his lung surgical procedure.
“My entire life has been the stage,” Mr. Jones instructed The Occasions. “The thought of not performing once more appeared worse to me than loss of life.”