Today, the family of actress Mary Alice Smith announced her passing on the night of Wednesday, July 27, in Recent York City. Known professionally as Mary Alice, the Tony and Emmy Award-winning talent had a profession that spanned fifty years, first acting in theater plays within the Nineteen Sixties and transitioning into film and tv within the many years that followed.

Mary Alice officially retired from acting in 2005, but left a legacy of memorable roles in her wake, from starring as Effie Williams within the musical Sparkle within the ’70s and playing the beloved dorm director Lettie on A Different World within the ’80s, all the best way as much as taking over the character of the oracle in The Matrix Revolutions within the early 200s.

Born in Mississippi, Mary Alice moved together with her family to Chicago when she was just two years old. It was there that she began acting in community theater after graduating from Chicago Teacher’s College and teaching at an elementary school. Acting soon led Mary Alice to Recent York City where she appeared in multiple theater productions before making her big screen debut within the 1974 film The Education of Sonny Carson. TV roles soon followed on shows like Police Woman and Sanford and Son together with additional parts on the silver screen in Malcolm X, Down within the Delta, and The Inkwell.

As we remember the cinematic gifts Mary Alice left behind, here we take a take a look at her life and profession.

01

1976

Smith played the role of Effie Williams within the musical drama Sparkle.

02

1987

Smith won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play for Fences.

03

1987

Smith won the Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Play for role in Fences alongside James Earl Jones. She could be nominated again in 1995 for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play for her part in Having Our Say.

04

1987-1989

From 1987-1989, Smith stared as Leticia ‘Lettie’ Bostic on the NBC sitcom A Different World.

05

1990

Smith received an Independent Spirit Award nomination for Best Female Lead for her role as Suzie in To Sleep with Anger.

06

1993

Smith took home the EMMY Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series for her role in I’ll Fly Away on the forty fifth EMMY Awards.

07

1994

Smith acted alongside a young Larenz Tate in 1994’s The Inkwell.

08

1995

Smith and her husband attend the forty ninth Annual Tony Awards at Minskoff Theater in Recent York City.

09

1998

On this film directed by Maya Angelou, Smith played Rosa Lynn Sinclair, an elderly mother who sends her daughter and grandchildren to go to with family in Mississippi for the summer.

10

2000

In recognition of her contributions to the stage, Smith was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 2000.

11

2003

After the death of Gloria Foster in 2001, Smith took on the role of The Oracle in the subsequent Matrix sequel.