She Died Young

She Died Young is the literary work of an astonishing mind in which intellect, madness, art and raw honesty unite. It is as far from a ‘celebrity memoir’ as you can get.

With humour, honesty and a poetic sensibility, Brenda Fricker traces a life-journey in which her resilience and inner strength shine brightly. With luminous memories of happy summers in Kerry, where she and her sister Gránia got up to hilarious mischief and learned to rebel against Irish orthodoxy, she also explores devastating personal challenges. She talks frankly of her complicated adult relationships. She describes the difficulty of surviving sexual violence and living with mental illness.

Brenda’s contributions to theatre, film and television represent an artistic legacy that few can match. Her work in films like The Field, Swann, The Swallow, Home Alone 2 and My Left Foot is widely acclaimed and her character, Megan, in TV series Casualty, was a huge success. In 1990 she became the first Irish actor to win an Oscar, for Best Supporting Actress in My Left Foot.

Brenda Fricker (born 17 February 1945) is an Irish actor, whose career has spanned six decades on stage and screen. She has appeared in more than 30 films and television roles. In 1990, she became the first Irish actress to win an Oscar, for Best Supporting Actress for the biopic My Left Foot (1989). At the time of writing she remains the only Irish actress to have done so. She also appeared in films and TV series and shows such as Licking Hitler (1978), Casualty (1986–1990), 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), Swann (1996), Veronica Guerin (2003), Inside I’m Dancing (2004), Albert Nobbs (2011), Cloudburst (2011), Holding (2022) and The Swallow (2024).

Now in her eighties, Brenda is continuing to explore her love of language through the medium of literature.

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