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Once a Dallas school teacher, Hall became a star in later life with roles in Soul Food and Collateral
Actor Irma P Hall, star of Soul Food and the Coen brothers’ The Ladykillers, has died at the age of 91.
Hall died on Tuesday, her family confirmed alongside a statement that described her as “a beloved actress, author, poet, educator and public speaker whose contributions touched countless lives throughout her remarkable career”.
In an acting career that spanned six decades, Hall starred opposite Denzel Washington, Oprah Winfrey, Robin Williams and Tom Hanks, and worked with directors including Michael Mann, the Coen brothers and Jonathan Demme.
Born in Texas in 1935, Hall was raised with a passion for the arts as the daughter of saxophone player Samuel Player. For 27 years she worked as a high school teacher in Houston before pivoting to acting the early 1980s.
“I always believed I could do whatever I wanted,” she said in a 2001 interview. “I never knew there [were things] I wasn’t supposed to be able to do because I was Black or a woman.”
After roles in 1980s films including On Valentine’s Day and They Still Call Me Bruce, Hall starred alongside Hollywood A-listers such as Dolly Parton in Straight Talk and John Goodman in The Babe, before her career progressed to the next level in the mid-90s.
In the 1997 drama Soul Food, she played Big Mama Joseph, the unforgiving matriarch to three daughters (Vanessa Williams, Vivica A Fox and Nia Long). Hall won the outstanding supporting actress award at the NAACP Image awards for her portrayal. She resumed the role of Big Mama in a TV spin-off of the film which aired from 2000-2004.
She also worked with Robin Williams in 90s comedy drama Patch Adams and Clint Eastwood in the fact-based crime drama Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.
In 2004, Hall received a Cannes special jury prize for her work in the Coen brothers’ The Ladykillers, in which she played spiky landlady Marva Munson. The same year, she played the no-nonsense mother of Jamie Foxx’s character in Mann’s thriller Collateral.
Hall’s later films include Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans; My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done and the Sundance TV show Hap and Leonard.
The actor consistently advocated for the arts community and helped establish the Dallas Minority Repertory Theatre. Since 2015, the Irma P Hall Black Theatre awards have been annually held to recognize artistic achievement in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.
For many years, Hall was church mother at Dallas’s Inspiring Body of Christ church and a treasured member of the local religious community.
“Our beloved Church Mother, Irma P Hall, has taken her final bow on the stage of life and stepped into eternity,” said pastor Rickie G Rush in a statement. “While we mourn her passing, we are forever grateful for the remarkable legacy she leaves behind.”
“She started as a teacher in the classroom but ended up being a teacher to the world,” her daughter, Irma Hall Crayton, said. “My mom used to always say, ‘To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.’ And she was just that to many people.”