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Brenda Fricker, the reclusive “Pigeon Lady” of Home Alone 2 and Ireland’s first actress to win an Oscar, for her maternal turn in My Left Foot, has died at the age of 81.
The celebrated and prolific character actor died in Dublin on Thursday after a period of ill health, according to a statement from her agent, Phil Belfield.
Born in Dublin in 1945, Fricker began her career in her late teens, eventually appearing in nearly 100 films and TV shows across six decades.
Her work ranged from Irish and British series like ITV’s Coronation Street and BBC’s long-running medical drama Casualty to an eclectic mix of movies including So I Married an Axe Murderer, A Time to Kill, Veronica Guerin and Albert Nobbs.
That versatility extended to the stage, where Fricker appeared in classic and contemporary productions over the years at the Abbey Theatre in Dublin, the Royal National Theatre in London and the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.
“The world is lesser for the lack of her,” Belfield said. “She will always have a place in my heart and in the heart of so many film and TV fans the world over.”
The biographical drama My Left Foot saw Fricker play Bridget Fagan Brown, the devoted working-class mother of Irish writer and painter Christy Brown, born with cerebral palsy and played by Daniel Day-Lewis.
Her performance scored Fricker the Academy Award for best supporting actress Oscar in 1990, up against stiff competition from the likes of Julia Roberts, Angelica Huston, Dianne Wiest and Lena Olin. Day-Lewis also won the best actor Oscar.
The film’s international acclaim boosted movie-making in Ireland, according to Grainne Humphreys, director of the Dublin International Film Festival and a close friend of Fricker’s.
“The country’s film industry is built on the back of the success of My Left Foot,” said Humphreys.
“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.”
Hollywood roles followed for Fricker, including Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, in which her nuance and melancholy as a homeless woman who befriends Macaulay Culkin’s charmingly wayward Kevin McCallister made the secondary character a memorable one.
In 2025, Fricker published a memoir that became a bestseller on the Irish Sunday Times list. She Died Young: A Life in Fragments detailed both her happy childhood times along with immense challenges, from experiencing physical abuse and sexual assault to living with mental illness. Earlier this year, Fricker’s hometown tapped her for its highest honour, the Freedom of the City of Dublin.
Simon Harris, Ireland’s deputy prime minister, hailed Fricker as a national treature.
“She truly was among the greatest exports this country has ever produced and an ambassador for Irish talent on the world stage. Quite simply, we will never see the like of her ever again,” he said.