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mary alice

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Mary Alice, Tony and Emmy Award-winning actress who starred in the Broadway stage production of “Fences,” played the mother of three singing daughters in “Sparkle” and appeared as The Oracle in “The Matrix Revolutions,” died on July 2022, aged 85,  in her Manhattan apartment, according to a police spokesperson, after her body was found. She had been retired from acting for two decades.

Born in Indianola (Mississippi), on December 3, 1941, Mary Alice became a teacher in Chicago, although she left this profession to pursue acting, her true passion. She landed her first paid acting job in 1966, when Douglas Turner Ward, co-founder of the New York-based Negro Ensemble Company, brought a touring troupe to Chicago to perform such plays as “Days of Absence” and “Happy Endings.” . “The group wanted to use a local actor, and they hired me to do a couple of roles and do laundry,” the interpreter declared in 1979. “I loved the experience. I really loved it, and I didn’t mind washing and ironing twice a week.”

In 1990, Mary Alice participated in Awakenings , where she played a nurse, and in The Bonfire of the Vanities , like the mother of a boy Tom Hanks runs over in the Bronx. She also co-starred with Danny Glover in Never Go to Bed Angry , and was part of the cast of Spike Lee ‘s Malcolm X and Clint Eastwood ‘s A Perfect World . 

In addition, she won  a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play in 1987 for her portrayal of Rose in August Wilson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Fences.”

Following the death of Gloria Foster, who played the Oracle in the first two Matrix installments , Mary Alice inherited the role in Matrix Revolutions . 

More information about his private life is unknown.

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