Actor Brenda Fricker accepts her Oscar in 1990. [Reuters]
Actor Brenda Fricker accepts her Oscar in 1990. [Reuters]

Brenda Fricker, the Irish actor who became the first woman from Ireland to win an Academy Award, died Thursday at the age of 81, the BBC reported Friday (local time).

Her agency, Phil Belfield, said in a statement that Fricker died in Dublin on Thursday night after a period of declining health. "We will never see her like again," the agency said. "The world is a bleaker place without her."

The role that cemented Fricker's global reputation was in "My Left Foot," released in 1989. The film, based on the true story of Christy Brown — a man born with cerebral palsy who could only move his left foot freely — starred Daniel Day-Lewis in the lead role, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Fricker won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress at the 1990 ceremony, beating out fellow nominees including Julia Roberts and Anjelica Huston. According to the BBC, it was a historic first: no Irish actress had ever won an Oscar before.

Fricker went on to build a wide-ranging filmography. Among her best-known later roles was the Pigeon Lady in "Home Alone 2," released in 1992, in which her character strikes up a friendship with Kevin, the boy played by Macaulay Culkin — a performance that made her a familiar face to audiences around the world.

Tributes poured in from Irish political and diplomatic circles following news of her death. Irish Tánaiste Simon Harris said he was "deeply saddened by the passing of a national treasure." Edward Walsh, the US ambassador to Ireland, called Fricker "a titan of Irish cinema" in a post on X, writing that her work — from Dublin to Hollywood — had brought Irish stories to the world and inspired generations on both sides of the Atlantic.


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