‘Soul Food’ Actress Irma P. Hall Dies at 91

Actress Irma P. Hall, best known as Big Mama in the 1997 film “Soul Food,” died Nov. 10 in Dallas at 91, her family said. Her portrayal of the family matriarch earned her an NAACP Image Award and made her one of Hollywood’s most beloved screen grandmothers. Hall began her career as a teacher and entered acting in her late 30s after filmmaker Raymond St. Jacques cast her following a poetry reading. Over a career spanning nearly five decades, she appeared in films including “A Family Thing,” “Beloved,” “The Ladykillers,” “Collateral” and “Meet the Browns,” and won a Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize for “The Ladykillers.” Her family also remembered her as a poet, educator and public speaker; no cause of death was announced.