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She Died Young is the literary work of an astonishing mind in which intellect, madness, art and raw honesty unite.
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 Brenda and her sister Gránia got up to hilarious mischief and learned to rebel against Irish orthodoxy, she also explores devastating personal challenges. Brenda talks frankly of her complicated adult relationships. She describes the difficulty of surviving sexual violence and living with mental illness.
In 1990 Brenda Fricker became the first Irish actress to win an Oscar, for Best Supporting Actress in My Left Foot. Her contributions to theatre, film and television represent an artistic legacy that few can match.
Brenda Fricker (born 17 February 1945) is an Irish actress, 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.