Danica Kirka

July 18, 2026 — 4:51pm

Brenda Fricker, who became the first Irish woman to win an Academy Award, for her role as Bridget Fagan Brown in the 1989 film My Left Foot, has died. She was 81.

The Irish character actor died in Dublin after a period of ill health, her agent, Phil Belfield, said in a statement.

Fricker won the Academy Award in 1990 for best supporting actress for her portrayal of the determined mother of Christy Brown, a writer and painter born with cerebral palsy and who could control only his left foot. Daniel Day-Lewis, who played Brown, won the award for best actor.

“She was just an amazing actress, amazing character, forceful personality, great writer,” the movie’s director, Jim Sheridan, told Irish national broadcaster RTE. “She could be obsessive – in everything she did – life, work, love. But no real malice or anything, she was just a very strong personality and a good laugh.”

Fricker said she was stunned when she won the Oscar, never thinking it was possible. In her acceptance speech, she thanked Brown “just for being alive” and paid tribute to his mother, saying “anybody who gives birth 22 times deserves one of these”.

She later spoke of how the award doomed her to being typecast to forever playing roles as mothers. She said she used the weighty statuette to prop open her bathroom door.

Fricker, who appeared in more than 90 films and television shows between 1964 and 2024, was known for her role as the “pigeon lady” in the 1992 film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, where she played a homeless woman who befriended Macaulay Culkin’s character in New York’s Central Park.

She also featured in the original cast of the BBC medical drama Casualty and appeared alongside Cate Blanchett in Veronica Guerin, the story of an Irish investigative journalist who was murdered in 1996.

“We will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her,” Belfield said. “I was honoured to know, love and work with her, and she will always have a place in my heart.”

Born in Dublin in 1945, Fricker received the city’s highest honour earlier this year when she was awarded the Freedom of the City.

In her autobiography She Died Young: A Life in Fragments, Fricker describes both happy childhood escapades with her sister Grania and her struggles to overcome sexual violence and mental health issues, which caused her to be institutionalised several times.

Simon Harris, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, said the country had lost a national treasure.

“She truly was among the greatest exports this country has ever produced and an ambassador for Irish talent on the world stage,” he said. “Quite simply, we will never see the like of her ever again.

Fricker was married to director Barry Davies from 1979 until they divorced in 1988. She became pregnant several times but suffered miscarriages, which led to severe depression much of her life.

Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.