Brenda Fricker, the Irish actress who made history as the first of her nationality to win an Academy Award and won the hearts of generations as the pigeon lady in Home Alone 2, has died aged 81 after a period of ill health, her agent has confirmed.
Her agent Phil Belfield 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."
Fricker won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar at the 1990 Academy Awards for her portrayal of Daniel Day-Lewis's on-screen mother in My Left Foot, dedicating the award in her acceptance speech to "all the people of Ireland."
The win made her the first Irish actress to receive an Academy Award.
Two years later, she cemented her place in popular culture with her role as the reclusive, homeless Central Park resident who befriends Kevin McCallister, played by Macaulay Culkin, in the 1992 blockbuster Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
She later recalled the experience fondly. "Home Alone 2 was the biggest budget film I worked on. All of my stuff was filmed in Central Park, and I was staying in the Plaza Hotel.
"It was luxury for me, I got paid a tonne of money to do it and had a wonderful time on it because nothing was rushed. It was easy going; we had people like Joe Pesci on the set, who is one of the funniest men I've ever met. It was absolutely lovely," she told The Hard Shoulder.
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Born and raised in Dublin, the daughter of RTÉ broadcaster Desmond Fricker and his wife Bina, Fricker worked as an assistant to the Irish Times art editor before taking her first small uncredited role in Human Bondage in 1964.
She went on to appear in Ireland's first soap opera Tolka Row before joining Coronation Street as a staff nurse.
British television audiences also knew her well from her long-running role as nurse Megan Roach in the BBC medical drama Casualty, a part she held from 1986 to 2010.
Her other screen credits included So I Married an Axe Murderer alongside Mike Myers and A Time to Kill with Matthew McConaughey, across a career that spanned more than six decades on stage and screen.
The news of her death comes a year after Fricker gave a rare interview with The Guardian in which she revealed she had been confined to her bed in Dublin and was in pain every day, becoming breathless simply from talking.
"I've never known tiredness ever in my life," she said, adding with characteristic dry humour: "I'm having a dreadful death. I'm just dying, every day in pain. I'll probably live to be 100."
Dublin City Council announced earlier the year that Fricker would be awarded the Freedom of Dublin in recognition of her contribution to Irish arts and culture.
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