Brenda Fricker is sitting up in a bed plumped with pillows, wearing a sapphire blue blouse and a head of grey-golden ringlets. One bedside table has her medication, 25 pills a day. Another has a cup of water, an ashtray and her cigarettes. Above and on either side of her are shelves jammed with an eclectic hoard of books: Salman Rushdie, Edna O\u2019Brien, Brian Aldiss, Alex Ferguson. Meanwhile, gazing out from framed black and white photographs on the walls, are writers, producers and actors from another era, plus a young, luminous Fricker herself.<\/p>\n
The current version of Fricker is 80 and not so well, happy to be interviewed but only from the bed of her Dublin home \u2013 not exactly a common setup with stars, but then she is no ordinary star. \u201cI\u2019m out of breath just talking,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019ve never known tiredness ever in my life. Weary. Will I ever get up again?\u201d She will, but the question is not entirely rhetorical. \u201cI\u2019m having a dreadful death,\u201d she says. \u201cI\u2019m just dying, every day in pain.\u201d This is said in a matter of fact tone, only to be undercut by a rueful prediction: \u201cI\u2019ll probably live to be 100.\u201d<\/p>\n
When she was eight, the man who gave her elocution lessons made her expose herself as he masturbated<\/p>\n
The grande dame of Irish and British theatre, TV and cinema \u2013 Fricker was a staple of Coronation Street<\/a> and Casualty,<\/a> and won an Oscar for My Left Foot<\/a> in 1990 \u2013 is an authority on survival. It is something of a miracle, in fact, that she made it into adulthood, let alone pensionable age. Fricker lit up the screen with warmth and light but her life was often cold and dark. At times she tried to end it, only to rediscover a hunger for love and joy and adventure. That spirit endures even though frailty has ambushed her and confined her to bed. She leans forward, blue eyes blazing. \u201cDo everything while you\u2019re young,\u201d she says with fierce urgency. \u201cJust do it.\u201d<\/p>\n Her younger self needed no urging. After stumbling into acting, she forged a remarkable career and collaborated with luminaries such as David Hare, Dirk Bogarde, Richard Harris and Daniel Day-Lewis<\/a>, and in her Hollywood spell encountered Macaulay Culkin, Harvey Weinstein and Donald Trump. Her greatest affection is for London\u2019s bohemian yesteryear. \u201cIt was a drinking culture,\u201d she says. \u201cEverybody was pissed most of the time. Happy days.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2018It was like I\u2019d jumped in a pigsty. I met Donald Trump in an elevator after and he was very polite about it\u2019 \u2026 Fricker as the \u2018pigeon lady\u2019 in Home Alone 2. Photograph: 20th Century Fox\/Allstar<\/p>\n The reason for this interview, however, is Fricker\u2019s new memoir, She Died Young: A Life in Fragments<\/a>, which reveals a life scarred by abuse and sexual assault. Her parlous health means we rendezvous at her terrace home in the Liberties, an area of Dublin\u2019s inner city. It is a bright and airy place, jumbled with books, plants, a dog and mementoes, including her Oscar, which props open a bathroom door. Carers visit daily. \u201cThey\u2019re so good. Great, great women,\u201d says Fricker.<\/p>\n I sit down, a copy of her book peeking from my bag. \u201cDid you read it?\u201d she asks. I nod. \u201cOh God, this is terrifying,\u201d she adds. \u201cI don\u2019t know how to do interviews about this.\u201d The motivation for the memoir was not ego but money \u2013 to end a tangled saga of disputed debt \u2013 and it took four years of hard graft. \u201cEvery line I deleted and started again. It was murder for me. It was kind of ironic because I was talking about things I had paid a fortune to psychiatrists to make me forget. So it was very painful bringing them back. I thought they were a bit morbid. I think I\u2019m a bit morbid. I\u2019m Irish<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Harvey Weinstein put his arms around me and I thought I’d vomit<\/p>\n Fricker was born in 1945 and grew up in the south Dublin suburb of Dundrum. Her father, Desmond, a journalist with the Irish Times and RT\u00c9, was an aloof, detached figure with his nose forever in a book. Her mother Bina was a schoolteacher who would on occasion erupt and assault Brenda. \u201cShe\u2019d beat the shit out of me.\u201d Decades later, doctors detected a brain tumour that they said might have caused erratic behaviour.<\/p>\n Despite love and solace from relatives in Kerry and her free spirited, sparky older sister Gr\u00e1nia, Fricker was an anxious child prone to bed-wetting. At the age of eight, she befriended a 30-year-old bachelor \u2013 the memoir calls him S\u00e9amus S \u2013 from a theatre group. When he offered private elocution lessons, her delighted parents delivered her each week to his home.<\/p>\n \u2018I mean, we all have a method\u2019 \u2026 Fricker with Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot. Photograph: ITV\/Rex Features<\/p>\n Perched on his sofa, she devoured cake while he taught her poems and read her books and answered her myriad questions. And then, over time, he had her hitch up her skirt and expose herself while he masturbated. The memoir, however, defends him. \u201cSo many of the happiest hours of my childhood were spent with him \u2026 our secret was the price I had to pay for the deep friendship that we shared.\u201d<\/p>\n I tell her that is shocking. She was eight. She nods. She accepts that she was groomed yet has no regrets. \u201cIt was a good deal for me because I was getting so much from him. I was a bright little kid, you know, curious about everything, and he never hurt me. He never touched me, he never frightened me.\u201d<\/p>\n Fricker does not imply any connection but from the age of 10 she became obsessed by blood and blades and began to cut and scar herself as a way to assert some control, to have another secret. When she was 14, a horrific bicycle accident \u2013 she hurtled face-first through a car windscreen \u2013 landed her in hospital for two agonising years. The driver was to blame but his political connections meant the incident was hushed up, she says.<\/p>\n Fricker had excelled at Latin and algebra but the accident derailed schooling and she left without any qualifications, which bequeathed a lifelong inferiority complex. \u201cA chip this size,\u201d she says, arcing a hand over a shoulder. Decades of voracious reading have not filled the void. \u201cIt still wounds me. That\u2019s how deep it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n Her memoir details a rape by an English actor named James Donnelly who, like Fricker, starred on Coronation Street<\/p>\n Aged 17, she was raped at a party, an act of violence and cruelty that left her \u201cbroken\u201d. Trapped in a cycle of depression, self-harm and suicide attempts, she was institutionalised multiple times. Yet a zest for life endured. She dabbled in journalism, au paired in Spain and got a role on the Dublin stage, which led to theatre and television work on both sides of the Irish Sea.<\/p>\n And then violence again found her. The memoir graphically details a rape by an English actor named James Donnelly. Like Fricker, he starred on Coronation Street, but at a different time, and died in 1992. When I mention the name, she goes quiet and reaches for a cigarette. \u201cHe was a bastard, yeah.\u201d She did not report the assault to police. \u201cGirls get raped and they\u2019re ashamed of themselves. You think it\u2019s your fault. You really do.\u201d<\/p>\n Fricker welcomed the #MeToo movement as an overdue reckoning for abusers but has little confidence in much changing, saying: \u201cIt\u2019ll go on for ever.\u201d<\/p>\n Which brings us to Harvey Weinstein<\/a> and My Left Foot. In 1989, she played the mother in this biopic of Christy Brown, a working-class Dubliner with cerebral palsy who became an acclaimed painter and writer. Weinstein championed the low-budget indie under his Miramax banner, leading to five Oscar nominations. Fricker lauds his promotional genius but still shudders at meeting him. \u201cHe put his arms around me and I thought I\u2019d vomit. He just emanated something off. He was just disgusting, like a big, sweating pig.\u201d<\/p>\n On the way up \u2026 in a scene from Casualty. Photograph: Radio Times\/Getty Images<\/p>\n Daniel Day-Lewis won best actor for playing Brown and Fricker won best supporting actress, a triumph that put Irish cinema on the map. For the girl from Dundrum, it was surreal \u2013 she rode in gigantic limousines and filled a suitcase with pilfered Beverly Hills hotel spoons as mementoes.<\/p>\n Hollywood roles followed, including in the 1992 film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. Macaulay Culkin<\/a> was a charming, beautiful kid, and spoiled rotten by those around him, she says. \u201cOf course he ended up on drugs, what else would he do?\u201d Playing a homeless pigeon-lover, Fricker ended each day \u201ccovered in pigeon shit\u201d. Returning to her suite at New York\u2019s Plaza hotel one evening, she met Donald Trump in the elevator. \u201cIt was like I\u2019d jumped into a pigsty but he was very polite about it. He just said, \u2018How\u2019s it going?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Her career thrived but loss and grief never released their hold. She had a miscarriage and, without her permission, doctors removed her womb, so she never had children. Marriage to the film director Barry Davies ended in divorce. Her adored sister Gr\u00e1nia died an alcoholic at the age of 68, which inspired the title of Fricker\u2019s memoir. Through it all, Fricker continued working: The Field, Veronica Guerin<\/a>, I Married an Axe Murderer, Cloudburst, more than 30 films. A forthcoming feature called The Swallow, by Tadhg O\u2019Sullivan, may be her swansong.<\/p>\n Falls, broken bones, swollen joints, aches and fatigue keep her in bed. Unable to sleep at night, she binge-watches The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills<\/a>. \u201cIt\u2019s better than sex,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s better than getting drunk. I just love it.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet a passion for her craft endures, indomitable. She has not quite forgiven Day-Lewis for remaining in character \u2013 in a wheelchair, grunting \u2013 for the entire shoot of My Left Foot. A disruptive indulgence, she says. \u201cI\u2019m fond of him. A good man, great morals. But he\u2019s a fucking method actor. I mean, we all have a method. I don\u2019t mind another method actor but if they interfere with my little method, then fuck off, like, you know?\u201d Fricker sighs and smiles. \u201cI\u2019ll be getting a phone call from Daniel. He phones me on occasion, tells me I\u2019m being bold.\u201d<\/p>\n As I leave Fricker in her bed, a tousled queen in her Dublin kingdom looking back on eight extraordinary decades, it\u2019s not a verdict I would quibble with.<\/p>\n She Died Young: A Life in Fragments by Brenda Fricker is out tomorrow.<\/p>\n