Oscar winner Brenda Fricker, Home Alone's scene-stealing pigeon lady, dies at 81

Word came from her agent, Phil Belfield, who didn’t share an exact cause, just that she passed away peacefully after a stretch of poor health.

Honestly, ‘legend’ gets chucked around a bit too easily, but with Brenda, it fits. She was pure Dublin – born and bred, and she never let Hollywood polish those edges off her. If you’re not instantly picturing her clutching an Oscar for ‘My Left Foot’ (she won Best Supporting Actress, in case you forgot), you might have been living under a sizeable stone. That performance as Christy Brown’s mother? Career-defining stuff. No sentimental strings, just tough love and a big heart.

Her agent put it better than anyone else could, really. In a statement, he called her:

'Dublin born and bred, Brenda Fricker undoubtedly deserves the noun legend. We will never see her like again and the world is lesser for the lack of her. I was honored 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.'

She was the sort of actress who always seemed to play someone’s mum, gran, or kindly neighbour – but she brought a proper steel to every role. Wasn’t just Oscar bait, either. Her career wound through TV, big British dramas, a memorable appearance as the Pigeon Lady in ‘Home Alone 2’ (honestly, as iconic as the kid himself), not to mention years of solid work in Irish theatre.

There are some performers you just assume will stick around forever because their faces have been on the telly since you were a kid. ‘We will never see her like again’ says it all. No fuss, no pretence, just Brenda doing exactly what you’d hope her to do – and apparently, off camera, she was as sharp and loveable as any of her characters. Details on funeral arrangements haven’t come out, and there’s nothing official about the cause, so don’t believe anything you read elsewhere just yet.