A career across six decades

Irma P Hall built a screen career that lasted six decades and put her opposite Denzel Washington, Oprah Winfrey, Robin Williams and Tom Hanks, working with directors including Michael Mann, the Coen brothers and Jonathan Demme.

The milestones of that career included:

• •Big Mama Joseph, the unforgiving matriarch to three daughters played by Vanessa Williams, Vivica A Fox and Nia Long, in the 1997 drama Soul Food, a role that brought her the outstanding supporting actress award at the NAACP Image Awards and that she reprised in a TV spin-off aired from 2000 to 2004
• •The part of landlady Marva Munson in the Coen brothers' The Ladykillers, for which she received a Cannes special jury prize in 2004
• •The no-nonsense mother of Jamie Foxx's character in Michael Mann's Collateral, also in 2004
• •Robin Williams in the 90s comedy drama Patch Adams and Clint Eastwood in the fact-based crime drama Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil
• •Dolly Parton in Straight Talk and John Goodman in The Babe, plus 1980s roles in On Valentine's Day and They Still Call Me Bruce

Her later work took in Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done and Sundance TV's Hap and Leonard.

From Houston classroom to Hollywood

Hall came into the world in Texas in 1935, the child of Samuel Player, a saxophone player, and grew up around the arts. Acting came second: she spent 27 years teaching high school in Houston and only moved to performing in the early 1980s.

Looking back in a 2001 interview, she said: "I never knew there [were things] I wasn't supposed to be able to do because I was Black or a woman."

A Dallas legacy on and off stage

Away from the screen, Hall was among the founders of the Dallas Minority Repertory Theatre. The Dallas-Fort Worth area has honoured her name each year since 2015, when the Irma P Hall Black Theatre awards began recognizing artistic achievement there.

At Dallas's Inspiring Body of Christ church, she held the role of church mother for many years. Pastor Rickie G Rush said: "Our beloved Church Mother, Irma P Hall, has taken her final bow on the stage of life and stepped into eternity."

Remembered by her family

Her family described Hall as a beloved actress, author, poet, educator and public speaker whose contributions touched countless lives throughout her remarkable career.

Her daughter Irma Hall Crayton said: "She started as a teacher in the classroom but ended up being a teacher to the world." She also recalled her mother's saying that to the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world.

The family confirmed the death; no cause or details of planned services were given.