Brenda Fricker, best known for My Left Foot and Home Alone 2, has died

Brenda Fricker - the first Irish woman to win an Oscar - has died aged 81, her agent has said.

She won best supporting actress in 1990 for playing the mother of Irish writer and painter Christy Brown in My Left Foot.

Daniel Day Lewis also won best actor for the leading role.

Fricker followed that with a memorable role in Home Alone 2 as the Central Park "pigeon lady" who becomes friends with Macaulay Culkin's character.

Phil Belfield, her agent, said she had died after a period of ill health.

In a statement, he 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."

Dublin-born Fricker also appeared with Austin Powers actor Mike Myers in So I Married an Axe Murderer (1993), and in A Time to Kill (1996), a legal drama fronted by the likes of Samuel L Jackson, Sandra Bullock and Matthew McConaughey.

She was also well known to UK TV audiences through her long-running role as nurse Megan Roach on Casualty in the 1980s and 90s.

Later roles included the film Veronica Guerin, starring Cate Blanchett as the real-life Irish journalist murdered for investigating organised crime, the adaption of Graham Norton's first novel, and the Channel 5 drama The Catch.

Fricker's stage credits include Lavender Blue and A Pagan's Place at theatres including the National Theatre and Royal Court Theatre.

She was married to director Barry Davies from 1979 to 1988 and became pregnant multiple times but suffered multiple miscarriages.

In a bed-bound interview with The Guardian last year, she said she was "every day in pain" was binge-watching The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills because she couldn't sleep.

"It's better than getting drunk. I just love it," she told the paper.

Fricker, who published her memoir last year, recounted a childhood involving grooming and abuse. However, in a lighter moment, looked back on her much-loved role in Home Alone.

She said childhood star Macaulay Culkin was charming, but admitted ending every day on set "covered in pigeon s***".

(c) Sky News 2026: Brenda Fricker, best known for My Left Foot and Home Alone 2, has died