Actor Geoffrey Holder has died at 84. I wrote last year:

In 1991, my wife and I visited New York. We were in the Soho Dean & Deluca, an extremely expensive grocery store, looking for a gourmet gift for our hosts. Standing ahead of us in the checkout line was … the 7-Up Uncola Nut guy! Geoffrey Holder, the 6’6″ black Trinidadian classically trained actor (the Haitian voodoo villain in a James Bond movie) with the basso profundo voice and the shaved head.

The kid at the checkout counter (and back then there were white kids working in grocery stores in Manhattan) looked up at him and said, “Hey, you’re … you’re …”

Holder looked down magnanimously and replied in his vastly deep and perfectly modulated voice, “Why, yes, you are right. I am James Earl Jones. But, don’t tell anyone. You see, I’m traveling in-cog-neeeeeee-to!” And then he let out a laugh like a gas main erupting and walked off chuckling.