Irish actor Brenda Fricker, who won an Oscar for her role in \u201cMy Left Foot\u201d and whose Pigeon Lady befriended Macaulay Culkin\u2019s Kevin McCallister in \u201cHome Alone 2: Lost in New York,\u201d has died. She was 81.<\/p>\n
Her talent agent Phil Belfield confirmed Fricker\u2019s death in a statement shared with The Times on Friday. The actor died peacefully Thursday evening in Dublin after a \u201cperiod of ill health,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her,\u201d Belfield said in the statement. \u201cI was honored to know, love and work with her and she will always have a place in my heart and in the heart of so many film and TV fans the world over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fricker, who was born Feb. 17, 1945, in Dublin, appeared in nearly 100 TV, film and short projects since the mid-1960s. She reached international acclaim for her work in Jim Sheridan\u2019s 1989 comedy-drama \u201cMy Left Foot,\u201d based on the life of Dublin-born painter Christy Brown, who only had control over the titular limb due to cerebral palsy. Daniel Day-Lewis starred as Brown and Fricker played his supportive mother. She earned the Academy Award for supporting actress, becoming the first Irish female actor to win an Oscar, and Day-Lewis took home the prize for lead actor. <\/p>\n
\u201cMy Left Foot\u201d was also nominated for best picture, director and adapted screenplay. <\/p>\n
In her review of the film for The Times<\/a> in 1990, film critic Sheila Benson<\/a> praised a \u201cmagnificent\u201d Fricker for her portrayal of motherly love. \u201cShe plays [Mrs. Brown] like the rock she must have been, without a jot of martyrdom or a flicker of complaint and without an actressy moment,\u201d Benson wrote. <\/p>\n The \u201990s brought Fricker additional roles in productions including \u201cThe Field,\u201d \u201cHome Alone 2: Lost in New York,\u201d \u201cAngels in the Outfield,\u201d \u201cA Time to Kill\u201d and \u201cVeronica Guerin.\u201d She counted Cate Blanchett, Joe Pesci, Tim Curry, James McAvoy, Fiona Shaw, Sean Bean, Richard Harris, Christopher Lloyd and Tony Danza as co-stars, to name a few.<\/p>\n For generations of movie audiences, however, Fricker will most likely be remembered as the Pigeon Lady from \u201cHome Alone 2.\u201d <\/p>\n In the sequel to the hit \u201cHome Alone,\u201d Fricker\u2019s Pigeon Lady was a source of unexpected tenderness for Culkin\u2019s Kevin, now stranded during the holidays in New York. He first encounters Fricker\u2019s odd character in Central Park, dressed in oversized, dirty clothing with city birds resting on her head and shoulders. Though she\u2019s a terrifying sight at first, the film later reveals Fricker\u2019s character has a heartbreaking past. <\/p>\n \u201cThe man I loved fell out of love with me,\u201d she tells Kevin one evening, adding, \u201cwhenever the chance to be loved came along again, I ran away from it. I stopped trusting people.\u201d<\/p>\n Kevin later gifts his new friend a turtledove ornament after learning the animal represents friendship and love. <\/p>\n Fricker continued acting through 2015 \u2014 with roles in numerous TV movies, miniseries, more than 70 episodes of the show \u201cCasualty\u201d and films such as \u201cConspiracy of Silence\u201d and \u201cRory O\u2019Shea Was Here\u201d \u2014 but her career tapered off. She was last credited for the 2024 film \u201cThe Shallow.\u201d <\/p>\n Fricker attended Catholic school but drifted away from religion in her late teens. She suffered injuries from a car crash at age 14, prompting her parents to spend their life savings on plastic surgery as part of her recovery. She also suffered other health issues during childhood and spent two years in a sanatorium. <\/p>\n \u201cThe positive side is, it taught me about self-sufficiency,\u201d she told The Times in 1993<\/a>. <\/p>\n She was a journalist for the Irish Times, where her father had also worked, before she started acting. She graced the stage at Dublin\u2019s Abbey Theatre and the Royal Shakespeare Company in London, and never looked back. <\/p>\n Amid her mounting fame in the 1990s and early aughts, Fricker did not heed the call to move Stateside and lived in the U.K. before ultimately returning to Dublin. \u201cI didn\u2019t like Los Angeles,\u201d she recalled in 1993. \u201cI don\u2019t like the heat and I found it uninteresting. I wasn\u2019t comfortable there.\u201d<\/p>\n