Home Alone Pigeon Lady actress Brenda Fricker says she will be alone this Christmas. While Home Alone is arguably one of the best Christmas movies around, the sequel also has quite a lot of fans during the holiday season, though not quite as many. In the movie, Fricker’s character is befriended by Macaulay Culkin’s Kevin McCallister after he goes missing in New York City, and is simply known as the Pigeon Lady. In a new interview, the Academy Award winning actress revealed that this Christmas will be a lonely one, which unfortunately is the same for a lot of people around the world this year.
In the interview, Brenda Fricker was asked how she was going to be spending the holidays. “I’m 75 now, and I would be lying if I said it would be a nice and happy Christmas because I’m old and I live alone. It can be very dark,” she admitted. Fricker continued: “I turn the phone off and put the blinds down. I do pre-record some good programs and I have my dog and I get myself through it that way.” Fricker went on to say, “I don’t want to be sounding kind of negative but it is a different kind of Christmas, that’s all. While I don’t find Christmas all that difficult, what I do find difficult is New Year’s Eve.”
Brenda Fricker was previously married to director Barry Davies, but they are no longer married and she lives on her own in The Liberties, Dublin. However, she does have her dog and previously admitted that, besides her dog, her loves are drinking Guinness, reading poetry, and playing snooker. For Fricker, Home Alone 2 was just a blip on the radar in her long career, though she does worry about Macaulay Culkin from time to time. “No I don’t [hear from Macaulay],” she said when asked if the two are still in touch. “I worry about him, but I’m not in touch with him.”
While a lot of people know Brenda Fricker best as the Pigeon Lady in Home Alone 2, she had a successful acting career that spanned six decades. In 1990, she became the first Irish actress to win an Academy Award, earning the award for Best Supporting Actress for My Left Foot, starring alongside Daniel Day-Lewis. The actress has over 30 television and movie roles to her credit and she officially retired from acting back in 2013. When reflecting on her career in 2012, she revealed, “Of all the films I’ve made, only three do I remember where I felt I’d moved forward as an actress: Cloudburst, My Left Foot, and The Field.”
The Pigeon Lady has been in the news a lot over the past few days, thanks to Kristen Wiig portraying the character in a Saturday Night Live sketch, which focuses on one of Home Alone 2‘s flaws. The sketch has been praised by fans of the show, along with Home Alone fans who always wondered why Kevin McCallister didn’t do more to help his new homeless friend who has a pretty dark past. You can check out the whole interview with Brenda Fricker over at the Ray D’Arcy Show Podcast. You can check out the Pigeon Lady SNL sketch below.
