Mary Alice returned to acting in the mid-1960s through community theater and appeared in three
Douglass Turner Ward's plays, including
Days of Absence and
Happy Endings. Mary Alice also washed the cast's laundry for a salary of $200 a week. She did some acting in
New York City during the late 1960s and early 1970s, performing in multiple productions at
La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in
Manhattan's East Village between 1969 and 1973. Her first production at La MaMa was
Adrienne Kennedy's ''
A Rat's Mass'' in September 1969. She reprised her role as Sister Rat in the October 1969 production, and again in the January 1971 production. All three productions were directed by Seth Allen. In 1970, Mary Alice performed in
Ed Bullins'
Street Sounds, directed by Hugh Gittens. She later performed in Lamar Alford's
Thoughts in December 1972 and January 1973. Mary Alice made her screen début in the 1974 film
The Education of Sonny Carson, and later appeared in the television shows
Police Woman and
Sanford and Son. She played Ellie Grant Hubbard on the
soap opera All My Children during the mid-1980s, and the role of Cora in
Stan Lathan's 1984 cult-classic film
Beat Street, as well as co–starred in
A Different World as Leticia "Lettie" Bostic from the series' start in 1987 until the end of the second season in 1989. She replaced
Gloria Foster as the
Oracle in the sequel
The Matrix Revolutions (2003) and the
video game tie-in
Enter the Matrix (2003) after Foster, who originated the role, died in 2001. Alice reprised the role one last time in
The Matrix Online prior to retiring from acting in 2005. ==Personal life and death==