Dallas

Actor Irma P. Hall, the former educator who pivoted to acting in her late 30s to star in films including “Soul Food,” “The Ladykillers” and “Meet the Browns,” has died. She was 91.

Hall died Tuesday in Dallas surrounded by her loved ones, her family announced Wednesday in a statement. Her family said the actor leaves behind a “remarkable legacy” that spans from her memorable characters on screen, her time as a teacher early in life and her role as a church leader in Dallas in her final years. A cause of death was not revealed.

“She started as a teacher in the classroom but ended up being a teacher to the world,” Hall’s daughter Irma Hall Crayton said in the statement. “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.”

Hall, who was born in Texas and raised in Chicago, is best known to film fans for portraying scene-stealing, elderly types. She was Big Mama, the matriarch of the central Joseph family, in George Tillman Jr.’s 1997 “Soul Food,” starring Vanessa Williams, Vivica A. Fox and Nia Long as her three daughters. That same year she shared the screen with Kevin Spacey and John Cusack as witchy healer Minerva in Clint Eastwood’s Savannah-set “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” In the Coen brothers’ “The Ladykillers,” Hall was the religious and aging widow who rents a spare room to a deceiving “professor” (Tom Hanks) and his band of criminals posing as musicians (Marlon Wayans, J.K. Simmons, Tzi Ma and Ryan Hurst).

She earned numerous accolades for her work, including an NAACP Image Award for her work in “Soul Food” and a jury prize at the 2004 Cannes Film Festival for “The Ladykillers.”

“I’ve always found older women extremely interesting. In fact, as a child I’d be playing outside and when they couldn’t find me, they’d just start knocking at all the old people’s doors,” Hall recalled to The Times in 1996. “My mother used to say I was probably the only child that was born wanting to be old.”

Hall’s acting career spanned from the mid 1970s to the 2010s and also included roles in the 1998 film adaptation of Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” starring Oprah Winfrey, 1996’s “A Family Thing” with James Earl Jones and Robert Duvall, the TV series “Hap and Leonard” alongside “The Wire” star Michael K. Williams and Tyler Perry’s “Meet the Browns.”

She sharpened her ability to play older in TV, film and theater by channeling the women in her life and studying elders’ behavior, she told The Times in 1996. She made it a habit to visit nursing homes, speak with their residents and study their physicality from their gestures to their gaits.

“I practice little things like that all the time because I love to play old people and I don’t ever want them to be embarrassed or ridiculed by my performance,” she recalled at the time.

Irma Dolores Player was born June 3, 1935, in Beaumont, Texas. Her father was a saxophonist during the big-band era and her mother was a housekeeper. She returned to Texas for college, graduating from Texas College in Tyler. She remained in her birth state to work as a teacher in poor, segregated schools before her unexpected pivot to acting in her late 30s. She taught foreign languages and ultimately taught theater.

Actor-director Raymond St. Jacques discovered Hall after hearing her read poetry and cast her in his 1973 film “Book of Numbers,” paving the way for a decades-long career that would endear her to generations of TV and film audiences.

“I want to tell their stories so profoundly that no one will ever forget these characters,” she told the Dallas Morning News of her characters in 2017. “I don’t care if they don’t know who Irma P. Hall is.”

Hall later lived in Chicago, where she cared for her parents and pursued an award-winning theater career. She also dedicated her efforts toward nurturing upcoming talent in her home state, co-founding the Dallas Minority Repertory Theatre, and served as a longtime member of and church mother at Inspiring Body of Christ Church in Dallas.

Hall’s survivors include her daughter. A celebration of life will be announced at a later date.

The parent company of the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders has filed a petition aimed at preventing emo-rock band My Chemical Romance from continuing to use dancers wearing outfits nearly identical to those worn by the iconic cheering squad since the 1970s.

Pro Silver Star filed a document Monday in the District Court of Collin County, Texas, asking for a temporary restraining order and injunction against the band and event promoter Live Nation “to stop them from infringing DCC’s signature cheerleading uniform in a manner that causes confusion, trades off of Silver Star’s decades of goodwill, and degrades the DCC brand.”

A temporary restraining order hearing is scheduled for Tuesday morning.

On Wednesday, My Chemical Romance played the first of five Hollywood Bowl shows scheduled through the end of the month. During the song “Teenagers,” background dancers performed in costumes that the filing states “copied the DCC Uniform’s signature elements: white boots, white shorts, a blue blouse tied above the midriff, and a white vest adorned with blue stars.”

“Defendants left no doubt about who the performers were meant to be,” the filing states. “As the costumed performers cheered across the stage, MCR frontman Gerard Way told the crowd, ‘Thank you, Dallas.’

“Then Defendants handed the performers rifles. The costumed performers armed themselves with semi-automatic rifles and joined a staged firefight, and were then depicted being shot and crawling off the stage.”

Attorneys for Pro Silver Star sent the band a cease-and-desist letter on Thursday, the filing states, and a copy of the petition for the restraining order and injunction on Friday. The causes of action listed in the petition include false designation, false association, false endorsement, trade dress infringement and federal trademark dilution by tarnishment.

“MCR’s performers nevertheless again wore the DCC Uniform” on Friday night during the band’s second Hollywood Bowl performance, the filing states. “Audience members at both shows and online commentators understandably believed that the performers were the real Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and said so in social media posts that continue to circulate.”

Online photos appear to show that the costumes were used again during Saturday night’s show. A representative for My Chemical Romance, which finishes it run at Hollywood Bowl this Friday and Saturday, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“Silver Star is not litigious, and it takes no issue with MCR’s music, its artistic ambitions, or any message Defendants seek to convey,” the filing states. “Silver Star does not ask Defendants to change their setlist, narrative, politics, choreography, or even their decision to put gun-toting performers on stage. Silver Star asks only that those performers not wear the DCC Uniform while doing it. The universe of alternative costume designs is effectively unlimited.”

One of the most recognizable cheer squads in sports, the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have appeared on countless calendars and posters and starred in their own movies and TV series, including Netflix’s “America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders,” which is currently in its third season.

Last week, after years of fighting for pay increases, the cheerleaders announced that they have unionized, with the Cowboys recognizing the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleading Assn. as the collective bargaining representative for the cheer squad.