Brenda Fricker

Acting

Brenda Fricker

Born 1945-02-17 · Dublin, Ireland

Brenda Fricker (February 17, 1945 – July 17, 2026) was an Irish actress, whose career spanned six decades on stage and screen. She appeared in more than 30 films and television roles. In 1990, she became the first Irish actress to win an Academy Award, earning the award for Best Supporting Actress for the biopic My Left Foot (1989). She also appeared in films such as The Field (1990), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), So I Married An Axe Murderer (1993), Angels in the Outfield (1994), A Time to Kill (1996), Veronica Guerin (2003), Inside I'm Dancing (2004) and Albert Nobbs (2011). She was also a regular as a nurse in the BBC drama Casualty. Description above from the Wikipedia article Brenda Fricker, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

Acting credits

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York poster
6.8

Instead of flying to Florida with his folks, Kevin ends up alone in New York, where he gets a hotel room with his dad's credit card—despite problems from a clerk and meddling bellboy. But when Kevin runs into his old nemeses, the Wet Bandits, he's determined to foil their plans to rob a toy store on Christmas Eve.

Home Alone 2: Lost in New York

1992

A Time to Kill poster
7.4

A young lawyer defends a black man accused of murdering two white men who raped his 10-year-old daughter, sparking a rebirth of the KKK.

A Time to Kill

1996

My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown poster
7.5

No one expects much from Christy Brown, a boy with cerebral palsy born into a working-class Irish family. Though Christy is a spastic quadriplegic and essentially paralyzed, a miraculous event occurs when, at the age of 5, he demonstrates control of his left foot by using chalk to scrawl a word on the floor. With the help of his steely mother — and no shortage of grit and determination — Christy overcomes his infirmity to become a painter, poet and author.

My Left Foot: The Story of Christy Brown

1989

Veronica Guerin poster
6.7

In this true story, Veronica Guerin is an investigative reporter for an Irish newspaper. As the drug trade begins to bleed into the mainstream, Guerin decides to take on and expose those responsible. Beginning at the bottom with addicts, Guerin then gets in touch with John Traynor, a paranoid informant. Not without some prodding, Traynor leads her to John Gilligan, the ruthless head of the operation, who does not take kindly to Guerin's nosing.

Veronica Guerin

2003

Angels in the Outfield poster
6.0

Roger is a foster child whose irresponsible father promises to get his act together when Roger's favourite baseball team, the California Angels, wins the pennant. The problem is that the Angels are in last place, so Roger prays for help to turn the team around. Sure enough, his prayers are answered in the form of angel Al.

Angels in the Outfield

1994

So I Married an Axe Murderer poster
6.1

Just after a bad breakup, Charlie MacKenzie falls for lovely butcher Harriet Michaels and introduces her to his parents. But, as voracious consumers of sensational tabloids, his parents soon come to suspect that Harriet is actually a notorious serial killer -- "Mrs. X" -- wanted in connection with a string of bizarre honeymoon killings. Thinking his parents foolish, Charlie proposes to Harriet. But while on his honeymoon with her, he begins to fear they were right.

So I Married an Axe Murderer

1993

Albert Nobbs poster
6.3

Albert Nobbs struggles to survive in late 19th century Ireland, where women aren't encouraged to be independent. Posing as a man, so she can work as a butler in Dublin's most posh hotel, Albert meets a handsome painter and looks to escape the lie she has been living.

Albert Nobbs

2011

Closing the Ring poster
6.2

During the 1940s, a group of young men go off to war, leaving behind Ethel Ann, who is in love with one of them, Teddy. In modern-day Belfast, a man named Jimmy endeavors to return a ring found in the wreckage of a crashed plane. He travels to Michigan, where the grown Ethel Ann, who married another man after Teddy was killed in battle, now lives. Ethel Ann must decide whether to go with Jimmy to meet the soldier who last saw Teddy alive.

Closing the Ring

2007

Moll Flanders poster
6.1

The daughter of a thief, young Moll is placed in the care of a nunnery after the execution of her mother. However, the actions of an abusive priest lead Moll to rebel as a teenager, escaping to the dangerous streets of London. Further misfortunes drive her to accept a job as a prostitute from the conniving Mrs. Allworthy. It is there that Moll first meets Hibble, who is working as Allworthy's servant but takes a special interest in the young woman's well-being. With his help, she retains hope for the future, ultimately falling in love with an unconventional artist who promises the possibility of romantic happiness.

Moll Flanders

1996

The Miracle Club poster
6.3

Three close friends who have never left the outskirts of Dublin (much less Ireland) get the journey of a lifetime — a visit to Lourdes, the picturesque French town and place of miracles.

The Miracle Club

2023

Masterminds poster
5.3

A rebellious computer engineering prodigy uses his talent for pranks to outwit the security consultant who has taken the students at his prestigious private school hostage.

Masterminds

1997

Inside I'm Dancing poster
7.4

Michael is a 24-year-old who has cerebral palsy and long-term resident of the Carrigmore Residential Home for the Disabled, run by the formidable Eileen. His life is transformed when the maverick Rory O'Shea moves in.

Inside I'm Dancing

2004

The Intended poster
5.2

A period drama/thriller about a surveyor and his fiancée who arrive in a remote Malaysian trading post and encounter a closed-fisted ivory trader and her ill-meaning family.

The Intended

2002

The Field poster
7.0

"Bull" McCabe's family has farmed a field for generations, sacrificing much in the name of the land. When the widow who owns the field decides to sell it in a public auction, McCabe knows that he must own it. While no local dare bid against him, a wealthy American decides he requires the field to build a highway. "Bull" and his son decide they must try to convince the American to let go of his ambition and return home, but the consequences of their plot prove sinister.

The Field

1990

Tara Road poster
5.4

A grieving Connecticut mother temporarily switches houses with a woman in Dublin, Ireland.

Tara Road

2005

Pete's Meteor poster
4.9

Lives change for members of an Irish family after a meteor crashes in their backyard. The kids believe that it was sent down to them by their dead parents, but the government hauls the rock away and sends it to the local university.

Pete's Meteor

2002

Trauma poster
5.2

Awaking from a coma to discover his wife has been killed in a car accident, Ben's world may as well have come to an end. A few weeks later, Ben's out of hospital and, attempting to start a new life, he moves home and is befriended by a beautiful young neighbour Charlotte. His life may be turning around but all is not what it seems and, haunted by visions of his dead wife, Ben starts to lose his grip on reality.

Trauma

2004

Out of Ireland poster
7.0

Over the course of two centuries, seven million men, women and children abandoned their homeland for America's shores. In just one horrifying decade, two million left to escape a famine that left another million dead. This is the moving chronicle of the Irish immigrant experience.

Out of Ireland

1995

Conspiracy of Silence poster
4.8

When a priest commits suicide and two trainees are expelled from a seminary, a journalist starts to investigate the Vatican’s silence on broken vows of celibacy. A thriller examining the internal conflicts in the modern Catholic church.

Conspiracy of Silence

2003

Stone of Destiny poster
6.5

Tells of the daring heist of The Stone of Destiny in the 1950s by a charming group of idealistic Scottish undergraduates, whose action rekindled Scottish nationalistic pride.

Stone of Destiny

2008

Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss poster
4.6

The story of Heidi Fleiss, known as "The Hollywood Madam", who was the daughter of a prominent Los Angeles doctor and eventually became a prostitute for a well-known Los Angeles madam. She took over her boss' operation and soon was raking in $300,000 a month by hiring only the most beautiful and highest-class hookers and catering to wealthy Hollywood types, European and American corporate executives and Arab sheiks. Her operation was broken up by Los Angeles police in 1993, and she eventually went to prison for income-tax evasion.

Call Me: The Rise and Fall of Heidi Fleiss

2004

A Man of No Importance poster
6.2

Alfie Byrne is a middle-aged bus conductor in Dublin in 1963. He would appear to live a life of quiet desperation: he's gay, but firmly closeted, and his sister is always trying to find him "the right girl". His passion is Oscar Wilde, his hobby is putting on amateur theatre productions in the local church hall. We follow him as he struggles with temptation, friendship, disapproval, and the conservative yet oddly lyrical world of Ireland in the early 1960s.

A Man of No Importance

1994

Omagh poster
6.6

The movie starts at the 1998 bomb attack by the Real IRA at Omagh, Northern Ireland. The attack killed 31 people. Michael Gallagher one of the relatives of the victims starts an examination to bring the people responsible to court.

Omagh

2005

Licking Hitler poster
NR

1941 and the upper class Anna Seaton is hired as part of an allied radio propaganda project, creating disinformation about the Nazi war effort. But tensions between her and brilliant, working class writer Archie MacLean threaten to undermine her work.

Licking Hitler

1978