Brenda Fricker, Oscar-winning Irish actress, dies at 81
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Brenda Fricker with the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Irish-made drama My Left Foot (1989), which also won an Oscar for lead actor Daniel Day-Lewis.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- Brenda Fricker, the first Irish actress to win an Oscar, died aged 81 after a period of ill health, known for her role in My Left Foot.
- Her Oscar win boosted the Irish film industry, with My Left Foot seen as a key turning point for Irish cinema.
- Fricker had a diverse career in Irish, British, and US films, and was remembered as a vibrant and strong-willed personality.
AI generated
DUBLIN – Brenda Fricker, the first Irish actress to win an Oscar for playing the determined mother of disabled artist Christy Brown in the 1989 film My Left Foot, has died after a period of ill health, her agent said on July 17. She was 81.
Described as among the most respected Irish actors of her generation by the Irish Times, Fricker won the best supporting actress prize for the Irish-made drama that also landed Daniel Day-Lewis the first of his record three best actor Oscars.
She also starred in another renowned Irish film of that era, The Field (1990), and went on to play supporting roles in American films including Home Alone 2: Lost In New York (1992), where she played the kindly Pigeon Lady opposite Macaulay Culkin, as well as So I Married An Axe Murderer (1993) and A Time To Kill (1996).
“She was an amazing actress, amazing character, a forceful personality,” My Left Foot director Jim Sheridan told a phone-in show on national broadcaster RTE that was dedicated to Fricker’s career.
“She was vibrant and full of life and had her own opinions. She took no prisoners, let’s put it that way.”
Born in Dublin, Fricker began acting in the 1960s at the age of 19 in film, on stage and later in popular television shows in Ireland and Britain before her searing performance as Bridget Fagan Brown won her wide acclaim.
The success of My Left Foot was a turning point for the now booming Irish film industry.
“Many’s the time we’re talking about ‘oh we’ve got another 10 nominations’ but back then, it was literally this outlier, the little film that did,” said Dublin International Film Festival director Grainne Humphreys, a close friend of Fricker’s.
“The country’s film industry is built on the back of the success of My Left Foot.”
Fricker, writing in the Irish Independent in 2015, said she was probably prouder that her name became Dublin rhyming slang for knickers than for the Academy Award, which she stored in a plastic shopping bag under her sink before it made its way to the shelf. REUTERS
