Brenda Fricker
| Brenda Fricker | |
|---|---|
Fricker (left) holding her Academy Award in 1990
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| Born |
17 February 1945 Dublin, Ireland |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1964–2015 |
| Spouse(s) | Barry Davies (m. 1979–88) |
| Parent(s) |
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Brenda Fricker (born 17 February 1945) is an Irish actress of theatre, film and television. She has appeared in more than 30 films and television roles. In 1989, she became the first Irish actress to win an Oscar, earning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for My Left Foot. As of July 2014, she has tentatively retired from acting.
Fricker was born in Dublin, Ireland. Her mother, "Bina" (née Murphy), was a teacher at Stratford College, and her father, Desmond Frederick Fricker, was an officer in the Department of Agriculture and a journalist for The Irish Times. In her teens, she aspired to follow her parents' footsteps into journalism. Fricker has a younger brother named Daniel, who both works and lives in the Baltimore, MD area.
Before becoming an actress, Fricker was assistant to the art editor of the Irish Times, with hopes to become a reporter. At age 19, she became an actress "by chance", her feature film career began with a small uncredited part in the 1964 film Of Human Bondage, based on the 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham. She also appeared in Tolka Row, Ireland's first ever soap opera.
One of Fricker's first TV roles was staff nurse Maloney in Coronation Street, debuting on 10 January 1977. Brenda's character attended on the birth of Tracy Barlow on 24 January 1977's episode. Fricker came to wider public attention in the United Kingdom in another nursing role, as Megan Roach in the BBC One television drama series Casualty. Fricker bowed out as Megan in December 1990, after playing the character in 65 episodes, because she believed her character had "started off with a wonderful sense of humour, [but] lost it all and all she ever seemed to do was push a trolley around and offer tea and sympathy". In February 1998 she appeared in two episodes, with Megan attending the wedding of her former colleagues Charlie Fairhead and Barbara 'Baz' Samuels. In 2007, she returned for a single episode for Red Nose Day. The episode was written by Richard Curtis. Fricker's final appearance as Megan was in August 2010, when the character took a lethal cocktail of drugs to end her life.
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