Aleta Mitchell, who portrayed Dussie Mae in Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom on Broadway and appeared in films for Milos Forman , Wes Craven, Spike Lee and Clint Eastwood, has died. She was 74.

Mitchell died April 14 in hospice care in Branford, Connecticut, her family announced .

In the Craven-directed Haitian voodoo horror movie The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), Mitchell’s Celestine Durand shows up in a dream sequence as a corpse in a white bridal gown; when she opens her mouth, a huge snake emerges to bite Bill Pullman’s character in the face.

Later, the actress appeared in Forman’s Valmont (1989), in Lee’s Malcolm X (1992) and in Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997).

Born in Chicago on Feb. 12, 1952, Mitchell grew up in Hyde Park on the South Side.…