From The Hollywood Reporter
Mary Alice, the Tony- and Emmy-winning actress who starred in the original Broadway production of Fences, portrayed the mother of three singing daughters in Sparkle and appeared as The Oracle in The Matrix Revolutions, has died. She was 85.
Alice died in her home in New York City on Wednesday, an NYPD spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter.
The onetime Chicago schoolteacher received back-to-back Emmy nominations in 1992 and ’93 — winning in the second year — for her supporting turn as Marguerite Peck, whose child is murdered, on the Atlanta-set NBC legal drama I’ll Fly Away, starring Sam Waterston and Regina Taylor.
She also played dorm director Lettie Bostic on the first two seasons (1988-89) of NBC’s A Different World; the mother of Oprah Winfrey’s Mattie Michael on the 1988 ABC miniseries The Women of Brewster Place; and the mother of Harold Perrineau Jr.’s Augustus Hill in 2002 on HBO’s Oz.
In the cult favorite Sparkle (1976), the Harlem-set rags-to-riches story inspired by The Supremes, Alice was memorable as Effie, the single mom raising daughters played by Irene Cara, Lonette McKee and Dwan Smith.
Alice’s big-screen résumé also included Spike Lee’s Malcolm X (1992), Clint Eastwood’s A Perfect World (1993), The Inkwell (1994), Heading Home (1994), Bed of Roses (1996), Maya Angelou’s Down in the Delta (1998), The Wishing Tree (1999) and John Sayles’ Sunshine State (2002).
