Home Alone 2 'pigeon lady' Brenda Fricker dead
18 Jul 2026
The first Irish actress to win an Oscar, Brenda Fricker, who starred in Home Alone 2 and My Left Foot, has died aged 81, her agent has confirmed today.
Among the many roles Brenda played, she will be best remembered as the 'pigeon lady' in the iconic 1992 film Home Alone 2, opposite Macaulay Culkin.
In the box office smash, she plays a reclusive, homeless Central Park resident who befriends Kevin McCallister (Culkin).
Brenda died after a period of ill health, according to her agent Phil Belfield, who said: 'We will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her.
'I was honoured 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.'
The news of her death comes a year after Brenda gave a rare interview and said that she was 'confined to her bed' in Dublin after a period of ill health.
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The first Irish actress to win an Oscar, Brenda Fricker, who starred in Home Alone 2 and My Left Foot, has died aged 81, her agent has confirmed today
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Brenda's Best Supporting Actress prize at the 1990 Oscars made history as she became the first Irish actress to win an Academy Award
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Brenda, who won Best Supporting Actress at the Academy Awards for My Left Foot in 1990 playing Daniel Day-Lewis's on-screen mother, opened up about her health struggles.
She told how she was in pain every day and would become breathless just by talking, telling The Guardian: 'I've never known tiredness ever in my life.'
Brenda heartbreakingly said: 'I'm having a dreadful death. I'm just dying – every day in pain. I'll probably live to be 100.'
She said that when she's unable to sleep, she watches The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, adding: 'It's better than sex. It's better than getting drunk. I just love it.'
Brenda, who was the daughter of RTE broadcaster Desmond Fricker and his wife Bina, was born and raised in Dublin.
Before taking up acting she was an assistant to the Irish Times' Art Editor, before taking a small uncredited role in Human Bondage (1964).
She then appeared in Ireland's first soap opera Tolka Row, before playing a staff nurse in iconic British soap Coronation Street.
One of her most memorable and iconic turns came as the pigeon lady in Central Park in the 1992 Home Alone sequel.
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