{"id":770044,"date":"2026-07-18T10:16:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-18T10:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/770044\/"},"modified":"2026-07-18T10:16:12","modified_gmt":"2026-07-18T10:16:12","slug":"brenda-fricker-first-irish-actress-to-win-an-oscar-dies-at-81","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/770044\/","title":{"rendered":"Brenda Fricker, first Irish actress to win an Oscar, dies at 81"},"content":{"rendered":"

LONDON (AP) \u2014 Brenda Fricker, who became the first Irish<\/a> woman to win an Academy Award for her role as Bridget Fagan Brown in the 1989 film \u201cMy Left Foot,\u2019\u2019 has died. She was 81.<\/p>\n

The Irish character actor died Thursday night in Dublin<\/a> after a period of ill health, her agent, Phil Belfield said in a statement.<\/p>\n

Fricker won the Academy Award in 1990 for best supporting actress for her portrayal of the determined mother of Christy Brown, a writer and painter who was born with cerebral palsy and could control only his left foot. Daniel Day-Lewis, who played Brown, won the award for best actor.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe was just an amazing actress, amazing character, forceful personality, great writer,\u201d the movie\u2019s director, Jim Sheridan, told Irish national broadcaster RTE. \u201cShe could be obsessive \u2014 in everything she did \u2014 life, work, love. But no real malice or anything, she was just a very strong personality and a good laugh.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n AP AUDIO: Brenda Fricker, the first Irish actress to win an Oscar, for \u2018My Left Foot,\u2019 dies at 81\n <\/p>\n

AP correspondent Jennifer King reports on the passing of Irish actress Brenda Fricker.<\/p>\n

Fricker said she was stunned when she won the Oscar, never thinking it was possible. In her acceptance speech, she thanked Brown \u201cjust for being alive\u201d and paid tribute to his mother, saying \u201canybody who gives birth 22 times deserves one of these.\u201d<\/p>\n

She later spoke of how the award doomed her to being typecast to forever playing roles as mothers. Later in life, she said she used the weighty statuette to prop open her bathroom door.<\/p>\n

Fricker, who appeared in more than 90 films and television shows between 1964 and 2024, was known for her role as the \u201cpigeon lady\u201d in the 1992 film \u201cHome Alone 2: Lost in New York,\u201d<\/a> where she played a homeless woman who befriended Macaulay Culkin\u2019s character in New York\u2019s Central Park.<\/p>\n

She also featured in the original cast of the BBC medical drama \u201cCasualty\u201d and appeared alongside Cate Blanchett in \u201cVeronica Guerin,\u201d the story of an Irish investigative journalist who was murdered in 1996.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her,\u2019\u2019 Belfield said. \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

Born in Dublin in 1945, Fricker received the city\u2019s highest honor earlier this year when she was awarded the Freedom of the City.<\/p>\n

In her autobiography \u201cShe Died Young: A Life in Fragments,\u201d Fricker describes both happy childhood escapades with her sister Grania and her struggles to overcome sexual violence and mental health issues, which caused her to be institutionalized several times. Published in September 2025, the book appeared on the Irish Sunday Times bestseller list.<\/p>\n

Simon Harris, Ireland\u2019s deputy prime minister, said the country had lost a national treasure.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe truly was among the greatest exports this country has ever produced and an ambassador for Irish talent on the world stage,\u2019’ he said. \u201cQuite simply, we will never see the like of her ever again.<\/p>\n

Fricker was married to director Barry Davies from 1979 until they divorced in 1988. She became pregnant several times but suffered miscarriages, which led to severe depression much of her life.<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

Associated Press writer Brian Melley in London contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 Brenda Fricker, who became the first Irish woman to win an Academy Award for her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770045,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[328691,328687,328688,75097,55040,26017,88,793,1923,328690,16831,206,2005,3509,328689,21968,965],"class_list":["post-770044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-barry-davies","tag-brenda-fricker","tag-bridget-fagan-brown","tag-cate-blanchett","tag-daniel-day-lewis","tag-dublin","tag-entertainment","tag-general-news","tag-ireland","tag-jim-sheridan","tag-macaulay-culkin","tag-movies","tag-new-york","tag-notable-deaths","tag-phil-belfield","tag-simon-harris","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770044\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770045"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}