Brenda Fricker, the acclaimed Irish actor who won an Oscar for her turn opposite Daniel Day-Lewis in 1989’s “,” died on Thursday in Dublin. She was 81.
Fricker’s agent, Phil Belfield, confirmed her death to the BBC on Friday. “We will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her,” he said in a statement. “I was honored to know, love and work with her and she will always have a place in my heart and in the heart of so many film and TV fans the world over.”
A celebrated character actor of the stage and screen, Fricker won many accolades across her career, including the inaugural 2008 Maureen O’Hara award from the Kerry Film Festival, which honors women that have excelled on film. In 2020, she was ranked 26 on the Irish Times’ list of the greatest Irish film actors of all time. Aside from her work on “My Left Foot,” she is perhaps best remembered by general audiences as the Pigeon Lady from the popular Christmas film “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.”
Fricker was born in Dublin to Desmond Frederick Fricker, a journalist for the Irish Times. Before becoming an actor, she initially wanted to be a journalist, and worked for the Irish Times as an assistant to the paper’s art editor. Her first film appearance was when she was 19, in a small uncredited part in the 1964 drama “Of Human Bondage.” She also had a minor appearance in the Irish soap opera “Tolka Row” that year.
Throughout the 70s and 80s, Fricker would appear in various British soap operas and films, mostly in small roles. In 1977, she had a short 4-episode arc in the ITV soap “Coronation Street” as a nurse who delivered the baby of the main villain Tracy Barlow (played at the time by Christabel Finch). Other films and shows she appeared in include “The Quatermass Conclusion” in 1978, “The Music Machine” in 1979, “Bloody Kids” in 1980 and “Cockles” in 1984.
Fricker first gained attention from audiences when she starred in the original cast of “Casualty,” the long running BBC medical drama Accident and Emergency Department of the fictional Holby City hospital. The show, which is still running, debuted in 1986, and Fricker starred as Nurse Megan Roach from the first episode. Megan was one of the most-focused on characters for the first five seasons of the show, until Fricker left after 65 episodes. She would return for guest appearances in 1998 and 2007, and in 2010 returned for a tragic four-episode arc which ended with Megan dying by suicide.
In “My Left Foot,” Fricker portrayed Bridget Fagan Brown, the protective and loving mother of Christy Brown, an Irish writer and painter born with cerebral palsy. The film, which was based on Brown’s 1954 memoir, was directed by Jim Sheridan and starred Day-Lewis as Brown, with Ray McAnally, Hugh O’Conor, Fiona Shaw, and Cyril Cusack in supporting roles. For her performance as Bridget Fagan Brown, Fricker won best supporting actress at the 1990 Academy Awards. During her speech, she memorably dedicated her award to the woman she portrayed saying, “anybody who gives birth twenty-two times deserves one of these.”
Following the success of “My Left Foot,” Fricker began appearing as a character actor in several high-profile films. The year after, in 1990 she appeared in Sheridan’s follow-up to “My Left Foot” “The Field,” as the wife of British farmer Bull McCabe. Two years later, she would appear in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York,” in her memorable role as the outwardly scary but deeply kind Pigeon Woman that Kevin McCallister (Macaulay Culkin) encounters in Central Park. Other films during the ’90s included 1993’s “So I Married An Axe Murder,” where she portrayed May, the eccentric, Weekly World News-obsessed Scottish mother of Mike Meyers’ Charlie; 1994’s “Angels in the Outfield,” where she played Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s foster mother; and 1996’s thriller “A Time to Kill,” where her character Ethyl was the loyal secretary to Matthew McConaughey.
After the ’90s, Fricker primarily worked in Irish and British films. She received three Irish Film & Television Academy Award nominations for her performances in 2003’s “Veronica Guerin,” opposite Cate Blanchett; 2004’s “Inside I’m Dancing” with James McAvoy; and 2011’s “Albert Nobbs,” which starred Glenn Close and Janet McTeer. Other prominent credits include 2007’s “Closing the Ring” and 2011’s “Cloudburst.”
After largely retiring from screen acting in 2015, Fricker returned in 2021 for an episode of the Canadian TV series “Cam Boy.”
In addition to her film work, Fricker also had a long career on stage, acting in productions for the Royal National Theatre, the Royal Court Theatre and the Geffen Playhouse.
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