Brenda Fricker, the first Irish actress to win an Academy Award, has died at the age of 81.
According to the BBC, Fricker won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress in 1990 for portraying the mother of Daniel Day-Lewis’s Christy Brown in My Left Foot. Day-Lewis also won the Best Actor Oscar for the film.
The Dublin-born actress built a career spanning more than five decades. She became widely known for playing nurse Megan Roach in the BBC medical drama Casualty, appearing from its first episode in 1986 before making her final appearance in 2010. She also won audiences worldwide as the Pigeon Lady in Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992).
Her agent, Phil Belfield, paid tribute in a statement, saying the world had lost a unique talent. “We will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her,” he said.
Former Casualty co-stars Derek Thompson and Cathy Shipton also remembered Fricker as an exceptional performer and a warm, authentic person.
Her film credits included So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), Angels in the Outfield (1994), A Time to Kill (1996) and Veronica Guerin (2003).
Despite her Oscar success, Fricker said in a 2024 interview that the award led to typecasting and fewer opportunities. She described it as “the old curse of the Oscars.”
Ireland’s Deputy Prime Minister Simon Harris called her “a national treasure,” praising her remarkable talent and lasting contribution to Irish cinema. U.S. Ambassador to Ireland Edward Walsh described her as “a giant of Irish film” whose work brought Irish stories to audiences around the world.
Fricker published her memoir last year, reflecting on a difficult childhood and personal hardships, while describing her acting career as a series of “happy accidents.”
