WITH her rosy cheeks and quiet manner, Brenda Fricker charmed Hollywood when she became the first Irish woman to win an Oscar.
And it was typical of her down-to-earth nature that Fricker, who has died aged 81, used the statuette as a doorstop in her cottage home.
Brenda Fricker with co-star and fellow award-winner Daniel Day-Lewis at 1990’s Oscars ceremony Credit: Getty
The star as the much-loved ‘pigeon lady’ in 1992’s Home Alone 2 with Macaulay Culkin Credit: Alamy
Her six-decade career saw her triumph in everything from soaps like Casualty to Hollywood hits.
The Oscar was for her poignant performance in 1989’s My Left Foot — which also saw Daniel Day-Lewis take home an Academy Award.
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Fricker was also unforgettable as the ‘pigeon lady’ in Home Alone 2.
Casualty co-star Derek Thompson, who played long-running character Charlie Fairhead, said: “Truly the best I have ever worked with.”
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Chris O’Dowd also paid tribute, saying: “Such a gorgeous actor, doing everything in her own terms. I thought she brought it to the world stage in a beautiful way.”
But Fricker’s note-perfect performances masked a lifetime of pain off-screen.
She was abused as a child, raped twice, tried to commit suicide more than 30 times and was regularly admitted into psychiatric care.
In 2012, Fricker revealed that she had suffered from “crippling” depression for decades.
Brenda’s Oscar was for her poignant performance in 1989’s My Left Foot — which also saw Daniel Day-Lewis take home an Academy Award Credit: Alamy
Her much-loved role of Nurse Megan Roach in Casualty Credit: Getty
“Under the duvet for three months, not able to move. It was absolutely appalling,” she said.
And in a 2021 interview on Irish TV’s The Tommy Tiernan Show, she admitted: “I am a bit of a recluse.
“I live a very quiet life, well under the radar. I drive a tiny car, own a cottage . . . that’s about it.”
Fricker was born on February 17, 1945, the youngest daughter of parents Bina and Desmond.
Her father was a journalist who was not interested in family life and her mother, Fricker once revealed, “beat the s***” out of her.
Fricker also had to endure merciless bullying at the hands of her older sister Grania.
At the age of eight, she was sent to elocution lessons with a tutor, identified only as ‘Seamus S’ in her harrowing 2025 memoir, She Died Young: A Life In Fragments.
He read her poems, fed her cake and then forced her to expose herself while he masturbated.
With her Academy Award for My Left Foot Credit: Getty
With her rosy cheeks and quiet manner, Brenda Fricker charmed Hollywood when she became the first Irish woman to win an Oscar Credit: Alamy
In her teens, she briefly considered journalism as a career and worked as the assistant to the Art Editor of the Irish Times.
At 17, she was raped at a party — an experience which led to her being admitted into psychiatric care.
Fricker found her way into acting after landing a small role in the 1964 drama Of Human Bondage, starring Kim Novak, which was filmed in Dublin.
She appeared in theatre and in Tolka Row, Ireland’s first soap opera, before moving to London in the early 1970s to train with the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Fricker showed her dogged nature when she was turned down for TV play, Licking Hitler, about a World War Two BBC propaganda unit, because she sounded “too Irish”.
She spent an hour perfecting a posh English accent before phoning the producer, posing as a journalist.
After a long conversation, she revealed her identity and landed the part. But she suffered more trauma when she was raped by an English TV actor, James Donnelly.
Last year, she branded Donnelly, who died in 1992, “a bastard” — but she did not report the attack to police. She said: “Girls get raped and they’re ashamed of themselves. You think it’s your fault. You really do.”
Fricker married TV director Barry Davis in 1979 but they divorced in 1988 because she couldn’t cope with his drinking. In 2015, she said: “He was a wonderful, interesting, lovely man. But he became an alcoholic and I couldn’t live with it.
“I did everything and eventually, I thought, ‘I will divorce him and see if that frightens him’ — but it didn’t.”
Fricker and Davis — who died two years after they divorced — had tried to have children, but she heartbreakingly suffered six miscarriages.
She threw herself into her work, including 1982’s Bafta-winning The Ballroom Of Romance, which led to her much-loved role of Nurse Megan Roach in Casualty.
But her big break came in 1989 when she played the mother of Christy Brown in the biopic, My Left Foot.
Christy was an Irish painter and writer who had cerebral palsy and could only control his left foot.
Fricker won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, while its star, Daniel Day-Lewis, won the Best Actor award.
Method actor Day-Lewis stayed in character for the whole shoot, which led to a remarkable performance — but Fricker found it annoying.
“I’m fond of him. A good man, great morals,” she said in 2025. “But he’s a f***ing method actor.
“I mean, we all have a method. I don’t mind another method actor but if they interfere with my little method, then f*** off, you know?”
She showed her range in everything from 1990 drama The Field, with John Hurt and Richard Harris, to Mike Myers’ 1993 comedy, So I Married An Axe Murderer.
In the late 1990s, she gave up Hollywood to concentrate on TV work but continued to suffer severe bouts of depression and effectively retired from acting in the early 2000s.
But in 2021, she took on the role of the mysterious Mrs Meany in the TV drama Holding, written by chat show host Graham Norton.
Asked in 2024 what brought her happiness, Fricker replied: “Dogs have brought me happiness. Falling in love . . . I met a beautiful man and I married him.
“The days in London King’s Road in the 1960s. We were all as high as kites. We were happy.
“There’s so many different kinds of happiness. Peace and quiet. Noise. Any of them.”
