Mary Alice
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Mary Alice
Alice, Mary [née Smith] (b. 1941), actress. A versatile African‐American leading lady who spent much of her career Off Broadway playing challenging characters in contemporary black plays, Alice was born in Indianola, Mississippi, and educated at Chicago State before working as a teacher in public schools. She turned to acting in the 1960s and trained at the Negro Ensemble Company, the company where she would later give such riveting performances as the grieving mother Rachel Tate in Zooman and the Sign (1981). Alice's finest Broadway roles were the durable wife Rose raising her husband's illegitimate daughter in Fences (1987) and the 101‐year old dentist Bessie Delany in Having Our Say (1995).
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Mary Alice
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Mary Alice
Biography
Born in Mississippi, Mary Alice is a prolific actress on stage and television who is underutilized in feature films. She got her start with the Negro Ensemble Company and worked off-Broadway for several years. Her theater credits include The Vagina Monologues, A Raisin in the Sun, and Richard III. She received a Tony for her work in Fences and she appeared on Broadway in 1995 in Having Our Say: The Delaney Sisters' First 100 Years.Alice may be more widely known for her guest appearances on television during the '70s and '80s on shows like Sanford and Son, Good Times, The Cosby Show, and A Different World. She was also featured on the star-studded TV movie The Women of Brewster Place, directed by Donna Deitch, and the HBO miniseries Laurel Avenue, directed by Carl Franklin. She eventually won an Emmy for her work on I'll Fly Away. On the big screen, her breakthrough role came in 1990 with Charles Burnett's psychological drama To Sleep With Anger. She played Gideon's wife, Suzie, who is initially suspicious of the sinister Harry, played by Danny Glover. In the late '90s, Alice found some roles in independent films like Maya Angelou's Down in the Delta and Chi Moui Lo's Catfish in Black Bean Sauce. Well into her sixties, she started to play many estranged mothers. She was Alfre Woodard's mother in The Wishing Tree, Harold Perrineau Jr.'s mother on the HBO series Oz, and Angela Bassett's mother in John Sayles' ensemble film Sunshine State. In 2003, Mary Alice joined up with the Wachowski brothers to take over for the late Gloria Foster (her Having Our Say co-star) as The Oracle in The Matrix Revolutions. ~ Andrea LeVasseur, Rovi
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Mary Alice
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Mary Alice
For the United States Navy ship, see USS Mary Alice (SP-397).
| Mary Alice | |
|---|---|
 Alice at the 45th Emmy Awards Governor's Ball, 1993 |
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| Born | Mary Alice Smith December 3, 1941 Indianola, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1974–present |
Mary Alice (born December 3, 1941) is an American actress.
Alice was born Mary Alice Smith in Indianola, Mississippi, the daughter of Ozelar (née Jurnakin) and Sam Smith.[1] In 1987 she received a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her work in Fences. She also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1993 for I'll Fly Away (1991–1993). She replaced Gloria Foster in the film The Matrix Revolutions and video game Enter The Matrix as the Oracle, after Foster died in 2001.
Filmography
- The Education of Sonny Carson (1974)
- The Sty of the Blind Pig (1974)
- Sanford and Son (1974–1975)
- Good Times (1975)
- Just an Old Sweet Song (1976)
- Sparkle (1976) as Effie
- Lawman Without a Gun (1979)
- All My Children (1980)
- The Color of Friendship (1981)
- The Brass Ring (1983)
- Beat Street (1984) as Cora Kirkland
- Concealed Enemies (1984)
- Teachers (1984)
- Charlotte Forten's Mission: Experiment in Freedom (1985)
- A Different World (1987) as Leticia "Lettie" Bostic (Episodes 13–21, 23–44)
- The Women of Brewster Place (1989) as Fannie Michael
- Awakenings (1990)
- The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990) as Suzie
- To Sleep with Anger (1990)
- I'll Fly Away (1991) as Marguerite Peck
- Malcolm X (1992)
- A Perfect World (1993)
- Laurel Avenue (1993) as Maggie Arnett
- Life with Mikey (1993) as Mrs. Gordon
- Law & Order (1993) as Virginia Bryan (episode "Mother Love")
- The Mother (1994)
- The Inkwell (1994) as Evelyn
- The Vernon Johns Story (1994)
- Heading Home (1995)
- Ray Alexander: A Menu for Murder (1995)
- Bed of Roses (1996)
- Down in the Delta (1998) as Rosa Lynn Sinclair
- Catfish in Black Bean Sauce (1999) as Dolores Williams
- The Wishing Tree (1999)
- The Photographer (2000) as Violet
- The Last Brickmaker in America (2001)
- Sunshine State (2002) as Mrs. Eunice Stokes
- The Life (2002)
- Enter the Matrix (2003)
- The Matrix Revolutions (2003) as The Oracle
- What I Want My Words to Do to You: Voices From Inside a Women's Maximum Security Prison (2003)
- The Burly Man Chronicles (2004)
- The Matrix Recalibrated (2004)
- The Matrix Online (2005)
- Narrator Crime Scene USA (2000–2009)
References
External links
- Mary Alice at AllRovi
- Mary Alice at the Internet Broadway Database
- Mary Alice at the Internet Movie Database
- TonyAwards.com Interview with Mary Alice
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Copyrights:
Oxford Companion to American Theatre
The Oxford Companion to American Theatre. Copyright © 2004 by Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved.
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