Actress Mary Alice gained international fame with films such as "Awakening" or "Perfect World". In the third "Matrix" part, she occupies an iconic and cryptic role as "oracle". The American died at the age of 85.
Tony and Emmy Award winner Mary Alice is dead. A New York City Police Department spokesman confirmed to The Hollywood Reporter that the actress died on July 27 at her Manhattan home. According to the report, Alice was 85 years old.
She achieved international fame primarily thanks to her portrayal of the oracle in "Matrix Revolutions" from 2003. In the first two "Matrix" films, the oracle was embodied by actress Gloria Foster. Foster died in 2001 before the third part of the "Matrix" series was produced.
Born in Indianola, Missouri, Alice began acting at a young age and launched her stage career in her hometown. After a brief stint as an elementary school teacher, she returned to acting in the 1960s, working her way up to stage productions in Manhattans in the late 1960s.
Alice made a name for herself as an acclaimed Broadway theater and musical actress in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1990, for example, she starred alongside Robert De Niro in Awakenings. Alice had other engagements, among others, in the films "Malcom X" with Denzel Washington, "Perfect World" with Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner or in "The Bed of Roses" with Christian Slater.
The former Chicago teacher won her Emmy Award in 1993 for her role as Marguerite Peck on the NBC legal drama series I'll Fly Away, starring Sam Waterston and Regina Taylor. In the US cult film "Sparkle" from 1976 she also embodied the single mother Effie, who raises her three daughters against all odds. Mary Alice was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2000.
