Brenda Fricker, the first Irish actress to win an Academy Award, has died at the age of 81, prompting tributes from across Ireland and the entertainment world. She was best known for winning the Oscar for best supporting actress in 1990 for playing Daniel Day-Lewis's mother in My Left Foot, and for enduring popular roles as nurse Megan Roach in the BBC's Casualty and as the Central Park pigeon lady in Home Alone 2, making her a familiar and much-loved figure across decades of film and television.

Born in Dublin, Fricker started out on stage and in early television, including the soap opera Tolka Row and Coronation Street, before her Oscar win beat Hollywood stars such as Julia Roberts and Anjelica Huston. She was a cast member of Casualty from its first episode in 1986 until 2010, and later appeared in films including So I Married an Axe Murderer, A Time to Kill and Veronica Guerin. She said the Oscar had led to her being typecast and overlooked for other roles, joking that "you don't get any money" with it. Tributes came from her agent Phil Belfield, Casualty co-stars Derek Thompson and Cathy Shipton, and Ireland's deputy prime minister Simon Harris, who called her "a national treasure".