Brenda Fricker
Entertainment
Actress
Born: 17/02/1945
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Died: 16/07/2026
Brenda Fricker, who has died aged 81, was only the second Irish actor – and the first female one – to win an Oscar, for her role as Daniel Day-Lewis’s mother in the 1989 film My Left Foot, after shooting to fame in the original cast of the BBC medical drama Casualty. As the nurse Megan Roach, she was the Mother Earth of the fictional Holby City hospital’s A&E department for the programme’s first five series (1986-90). “We knew the show had to have compassion,” said Casualty’s first producer, Geraint Morris. “We made Megan the person everyone could talk to.” Megan was a workhorse. Although the most experienced nurse, she was the least technically qualified, doing the dirty work, breaking bad news to relatives and biting her lip when doctors put her down. Fricker decided to move on following an episode in which her character was held hostage by a murderer. “Megan didn’t develop in the way she was meant to,” the actor reflected. “She started off with a sense of humour. But she lost it and all she seemed to do was push a trolley round and offer tea and sympathy.
19 points.