Smith was born in Indianola, Mississippi on December 3, 1941. In 1987 she received a Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Play for her work in Fences. She also won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama Series in 1993 for I’ll Fly Away. Mary replaced Gloria Foster, after Foster died in 2001, in the film The Matrix Revolutions and video game Enter The Matrix as the Oracle.
