Irish Actor Brenda Fricker Dies at 81

Irish actor Brenda Fricker, who won an Academy Award for her performance in the 1989 film My Left Foot, died Thursday night in Dublin after a period of ill health. She was 81. Her agent, Phil Belfield, confirmed the death to CBS News on Friday and said in a statement that the world is lesser for the lack of her.

Born in Dublin, Fricker performed onstage in London and was part of the original cast of the BBC medical drama Casualty when it debuted in 1986. She won the Oscar for best supporting actress for her role as the mother of Christy Brown in My Left Foot, opposite Daniel Day-Lewis, who won best actor. Her victory marked the first time an Irish woman won an Academy Award.

Fricker played the Pigeon Lady in the 1992 sequel Home Alone 2. She appeared in So I Married an Axe Murderer in 1993, Angels in the Outfield in 1994, A Time to Kill in 1996, and Veronica Guerin in 2003. Her last film performance was in the 2024 movie The Swallow.

In her memoir She Died Young: A Life in Fragments, published last year, Fricker wrote about surviving sexual violence as a teenager and during her career. She told The Guardian that writing the book took four years and was painful.

“Every line I deleted and started again.”