Brenda Fricker, the first Irish actress to win the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in My Left Foot, has died following a long illness.
Fricker enjoyed a distinguished career spanning decades, including being part of the original cast of the long-running British series Casualty, starring in the acclaimed Australian series Brides of Christ, and appearing in the lesbian-themed film Cloudburst.
Fricker passed away in Dublin on Thursday night following a long illness. Her passing was announced by her agent. Fricker was 81 years old.
She was born in 1945 in Dublin and worked in a newspaper with hopes of becoming a reporter before she turned to acting.
In 1986, two decades into her career, she signed up to appear in the British medical drama Casualty as Megan Roach. When it debuted the show was criticised for its bleak portrayal of Britain’s national health system, but it also got politicians talking about the pressures doctors and nurses face on the frontline. Fricker stayed with the show for its first five seasons, and returned several times until her character died in 2010, in what fans have labelled one of the best episodes of the long-running series.
In 1989 Fricker took on her most acclaimed role as Bridget Fagan Brown. The film was the directorial debut of Jim Sheridan and was based on the memoir of Irish writer and painter Christy Brown who was born with cerebral palsy. At the 1990 Academy Awards Daniel Day-Lewis won the Best Actor trophy for his portrayal of Christy Brown, while Fricker took home the Best Supporting Actress for playing his mother.
In 1991 Fricker appeared in the landmark Australian mini-series Brides of Christ playing nun Sister Agnes. The show followed a group of young women entering the convent, and the lives of young students at the school run by the order. The series captures the social changes of the 1960s and had an impressive cast of talent including Russell Crowe, Lisa Hensely, Naomi Watts, Kym Wilson, Pippa Grandison, Simon Burke and Josephione Byrnes.
More memorable roles came with Home Alone 2, where she played a homeless women who aided Macauley Culkin. Fricker also appeared in Moll Flanders, So I Married an Axe-Murderer, A Time to Kill and she appeared opposite Cate Blanchett in Veronica Guerin.
In 2008 she made an unexpected guest appearance in the LGBTIQA+ themed television series Beautiful People which charts the early life of fashion identity Simon Doonan. She also had a role in the feature film Albert Nobbs where Glenn Close plays a man who conceales his birth sex.
In 2011 Fricker teamed up with Olympia Dukakis for the indie film Cloudburst. She would later describe it as one of the few roles where she really felt challenged as a actor. The duo played Stella and Dotty, an older lesbian couple who head off on a Thelma and Louise style road trip to get married in Nova Scotia.
Director Thom Fitzgerald told OUTinPerth’s Nadine Walker in 2013 about how the two actors at first struggled with the profanity laden dialogue.
“Olympia and Brenda were not sure they could bring themselves to say such things on screen, but they say they’re actors, so the script is their bible, which I guess would make me their God!” he said, laughing.
“By the time the film had finished I’d written maybe half of the dirty words in the movie, the rest, once those two were allowed to curse, I could not stop them!”
In her autobiography She Died Young: A Life in Fragments Fricker shared that she had a happy childhood, but later in life experienced sexual violence and mental health issues. She shared that she had been institutionalised for mental health care on several occasions.
Following her passing Ieland’s Deputy Prime Minister, Simon Harris, praised her work saying the country had lost a national treasure.
“She truly was among the greatest exports this country has ever produced and an ambassador for Irish talent on the world stage,” he said.
