Ron Cephas Jones, a veteran stage actor who won two Emmy Awards for his role as 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 on Saturday .
Jones had a double lung transplant in 2020 because of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and spent nearly two months in a Los Angeles hospital. Jones won Emmys for best guest actor in a drama series in 2018 and 2020 and was nominated for two more.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.”
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.