- Born
- Height5′ 5″ (1.65 m)
- Irish character actress Brenda Fricker was born in Dublin, and gained experience in Irish theatre and with the National Theatre, the Royal Shakespeare Company, and the Court Theatre Company in Great Britain. Brenda received great acclaim for her Oscar-winning supporting performance as the determined mother of a son afflicted with cerebral palsy in My Left Foot (1989). Venturing to Hollywood in the 1990s, she played a homeless woman befriended by kid-on-the-loose Macaulay Culkin in the sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) and followed up with a more zany mother role in the little-seen So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993). Having acted on English TV on the BBC series Casualty (1986), Fricker began conquering US TV with roles in the American Playhouse (1980) presentation Lethal Innocence (1991) and the miniseries Alexander Graham Bell: The Sound and the Silence (1991). Fricker offered memorable support as Albert Finney's exasperated sister in A Man of No Importance (1994) (1994) and appeared in support of Robin Wright in Pen Densham's Moll Flanders (1996) and as Matthew McConaughey's secretary in Joel Schumacher's A Time to Kill (1996) (both 1996).- IMDb mini biography by: s-cheyne@supanet.co.uk
- SpouseBarry Davis(1979 - 1988) (divorced)
- ChildrenNo Children
- ParentsDesmond Frederick FrickerBina Fricker
- RelativesNora Ann Grania Fricker(Sibling)
- Divorced Barry Davis in 1988 due to his alcoholism; they later reconciled in 1990 and remained together until his untimely death the following year.
- Became pregnant six times during her marriage to Barry Davis; on all of those occasions she suffered miscarriages.
- Was the 99th actress to receive an Academy Award; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for My Left Foot (1989) at The 62nd Annual Academy Awards (1990) on March 26, 1990.
- As a teenager, a car accident left her out of commission for nearly two years; later she suffered from a case of tuberculosis and the removal of a kidney.
- Residing in The Liberties neighborhood of Dublin, Ireland.
- If you're doing a scene and you think you're doing it wrong, just swear in the middle of it and then the director can't use it. It's an arrogant way of doing it, but unfortunately it's the only way of self-protection. You have to be a bit anarchic sometimes.
- When you are lying drunk at the airport you're Irish. When you win an Oscar you're British.
- I don't think awards are good, I don't think you should pluck somebody out of a job that is so communal and give them an award and everybody else is kind of left behind. I don't like awards. [They create] a competition element that shouldn't be there in our job, it really shouldn't, because it's such a family affair.
- Of all the films I've made, only three do I remember where I felt I'd moved forward as an actress: Cloudburst (2011), My Left Foot (1989) and The Field (1990).
- [on her character in Casualty (1986)] Megan was the mother we all want, full of love and understanding. I'm none of that - I'm not a mother and never will be and I wasn't even a very good wife; I'm not even a good nurse to my father, now he's old and frail. I'm much more rebellious than Megan. I couldn't do her job ever. Just go down to the hospital and watch what they do for an eighth of the salary I earned pretending to be a nurse. It makes you blush. You break your heart with people being kicked in the teeth by life. I couldn't handle it. I'd be reduced to tears.
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