Donald Sutherland
Donald McNichol Sutherland is a Canadian actor whose film career spans more than five decades. Sutherland rose to fame after starring in a series of successful films including The Dirty Dozen, M*A*S*H, Kelly's Heroes, Don't Look Now, Fellini's Casanova, 1900, Animal House, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Ordinary People and Eye of the Needle, he subsequently established himself as one of the most respected and versatile character actors of Canada. He went on to star in many other successful films where he appeared either in leading or supporting roles such as A Dry White Season, JFK, Outbreak, A Time to Kill, Without Limits, The Italian Job, Cold Mountain, Pride & Prejudice, Aurora Borealis and The Hunger Games franchise. Sutherland has been nominated for eight Golden Globe Awards, winning two for his performances in the television films Citizen X and Path to War. Inductee of Hollywood Walk of Fame and Canadian Walk of Fame, he received a Canadian Academy Award for the drama film Threshold.
Several media outlets and movie critics describe him as one of the best actors who have never been nominated for an Academy Award. In 2017, he received an Academy Honorary Award for his contributions to cinema, he is the father of Rossif Sutherland and Angus Sutherland. Sutherland was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, the son of Dorothy Isobel and Frederick McLea Sutherland, who worked in sales and ran the local gas and bus company, he is of Scottish and English ancestry. As a child, he had rheumatic fever and poliomyelitis, his teenage years were spent in Nova Scotia. He obtained his first part-time job, at the age of 14, as a news correspondent for local radio station CKBW. Sutherland graduated from Bridgewater High School, he studied at Victoria University, an affiliated college of the University of Toronto, where he met his first wife Lois Hardwick, graduated with a double major in engineering and drama. He had at one point been a member of the "UC Follies" comedy troupe in Toronto, he changed his mind about becoming an engineer, left Canada for Britain in 1957, studying at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.
After quitting the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Sutherland spent a year and a half at the Perth Repertory Theatre in Scotland. In the early to mid-1960s, Sutherland began to gain small roles in British films and TV, he featured alongside Christopher Lee in horror films such as Castle of the Living Dead and Dr. Terror's House of Horrors, he had a supporting role in the Hammer Films production Die! Die! My Darling!, with Tallulah Bankhead and Stefanie Powers. In the same year, he appeared in the Cold War classic The Bedford Incident and appeared in the TV series The Saint, in the 1965 episode "The Happy Suicide", in the TV series Gideon's Way, in the 1966 episode "The Millionaire's Daughter". In 1966, Sutherland appeared in the BBC TV play Lee Oswald-Assassin, playing a friend of Lee Harvey Oswald, Charles Givens. In 1967, he appeared in "The Superlative Seven," an episode of The Avengers, he made a second, more substantial appearance in The Saint. The episode, "Escape Route," was directed by the show's star, Roger Moore, who recalled that Sutherland "asked me if he could show it to some producers as he was up for an important role... they came to view a rough cut and he got The Dirty Dozen."
The film, which starred Lee Marvin and Charles Bronson, was the 5th highest-grossing film of 1967 and MGM's highest-grossing movie of the year. In 1968, after the breakthrough in the UK-filmed The Dirty Dozen, Sutherland left London for Hollywood, he appeared in two war films, playing the lead role as "Hawkeye" Pierce in Robert Altman's MASH in 1970. Sutherland starred with Gene Wilder in the 1970 comedy Start the Revolution Without Me. During the filming of the Academy Award-winning detective thriller Klute, Sutherland had an intimate relationship with co-star Jane Fonda. Sutherland and Fonda went on to co-produce and star together in the anti-Vietnam War documentary F. T. A. Consisting of a series of sketches performed outside army bases in the Pacific Rim and interviews with American troops who were on active service. A follow up to their teaming up in Klute and Fonda performed together in Steelyard Blues, a "freewheeling, Age-of-Aquarius, romp-and-roll caper" from the writer David S. Ward. Sutherland found himself as a leading man throughout the 1970s in films such as the Venice-based psychological horror film Don't Look Now, co-starring Julie Christie, a role which saw him nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor, the war film The Eagle Has Landed, Federico Fellini's Casanova and the thriller Eye of the Needle.
His role as Corpse of Lt. Robert Schmied in the Maximilian Schell's 1976 German film-directed End of the Game is listed in crazy credits, and as the ever-optimistic health inspector in the science fiction/horror film Invasion of the Body Snatchers alongside Brooke Adams and Jeff Goldblum. He helped launch the internationally popular Canadian television series Witness to Yesterday, with a performance as the Montreal doctor Norman
Oliver Platt
Oliver James Platt is a Canadian-born American actor. He has been nominated for a Golden Globe Award, as well as Screen Actors Guild Awards. Platt was born in Windsor, Canada, to American parents Sheila Maynard, a clinical social worker who worked in Islamabad, Nicholas Platt, a career diplomat who served as U. S. ambassador to Pakistan and the Philippines. He has an older brother, Adam Platt, a New York Magazine restaurant critic, a younger brother, Nicholas Platt Jr; the family moved back to the United States. Platt's paternal great-grandfather was artist Charles A. Platt, his maternal great-grandparents were equestrian Arthur Scott Burden and socialite Cynthia Roche. Platt is a great-great-grandson of diplomat and lawyer Joseph Hodges Choate and General Robert Shaw Oliver, he is a second cousin once removed of Diana, Princess of Wales, of her brother Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, through his great-great-grandparents, MP James Roche and heiress Frances Ellen Work. When asked about Diana, Platt has said, "I never met her.
It's a non-story. I'd love to tell you we were confidantes; the truth is I don't know much more about it than you do."Platt's paternal great great-grandfather was Joseph Hodges Choate. Https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Hodges_Choate Choate was the most successful lawyer in New York City during the gilded age. His brother William Gardner Choate, a prominent lawyer and Federal judge created Choate Rosemary Hall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gardner_Choate. His quest for politics began decades after his involvement in the practice of law. Choate lost. Years Roosevelt became President. While Choate was a favorite to be the next governor of New York and many American's wanted Choate to be the next President of the United States, he was appointed to become U. S. Ambassador to England. By President William McKinley. Where he developed a strong friendship to Queen Victoria later to King Edward the 7th. Joseph Hodges Choate was present during the inception of Edwards crowning, he lived in the American embassy in England.
Upon Choate's passing, over 5000 people attended his funeral in New York City. The New York Times published his passing as front page news https://www.nytimes.com/1917/05/15/archives/joseph-hodges-choate-dies-suddenly-famous-lawyer-and-statesman-was.html " Because of his father's career as an ambassador, much of Platt's childhood was spent in Asia, the Middle East, Washington, D. C. Platt attended twelve different schools, including the American School in Japan, has said "Even now I find myself envying people who have neighborhoods and roots." Platt's family made frequent trips back to Washington. Platt is a fan of the Boston Red Sox; when he was nine years old and his family visited the Kennedy Center in Washington, where he watched a performance that helped inspire his acting career. "One of the performances that made me want to be an actor started out with this 20-minute rambling, drunken monologue by this bum. And it was a young Morgan Freeman. I'll never forget it; this guy was just so riveting.
He stood there on stage alone before the curtain went up, he held this audience utterly rapt. Including myself, obviously." According to Platt, drama departments gave his childhood some stability, "It was something of a survival mechanism, in that it gave me a little subculture to plug into wherever I ended up. Kids need that. I did." Platt attended a progressive boarding school named Colorado Rocky Mountain School in Carbondale, Colorado. Platt majored in drama at Tufts University, where he became close friends with Hank Azaria, he spent three years working in theatre in Boston, which he said had a "wealth of serious amateur theatre at that time…I played many roles, it was the best training I could have had." Platt travelled with Shakespeare and Company, based in Lenox, touring schools to earn his Equity card, before moving to New York. Platt's early career involved Off-Broadway and regional theatre, he appeared onstage with the New York Shakespeare Festival, Lincoln Center Theater, Manhattan Theatre Club and other companies across many genres.
He obtained an agent while working at Manhattan Punch Line Theatre, met actor Bill Murray at his cousin's Christmas party. Murray attended Platt's show and recommended Platt to director Jonathan Demme, who cast him in Married to the Mob in 1988. Platt attributes his breakthrough to appearing at the Punch Line Theater. Platt makes his decisions about accepting acting roles based on the role being "different from what I just did... I do have to be interested in the role". After Married to the Mob, he appeared in Working Girl, Beethoven, The Three Musketeers, A Time to Kill, Executive Decision, Bulworth. In 1998 Platt and Stanley Tucci played two deadbeat actors who improvise with unsuspecting strangers in The Impostors. Tucci and Platt developed the characters while working on a play at Yale University in 1988, with Tucci completing the screenplay and directing the film. In 1999, Platt played the wealthy and eccentric crocodile enthusiast Hector in David E. Kelley's Lake Placid, alongside Bill Pullman and Bridget Fonda.
Platt described Hector as "pretty abrasive and obnoxious at times, but, I hope, he has a way of growing on you. I think David thought of him as a great white hunter sort of guy, but when I signed on for the role he sort of wrote him in a different direction."The short-lived dr
Patrick McGoohan
Patrick Joseph McGoohan was an Irish actor and director. He began his career in the United Kingdom in the 1950s, relocating to the United States in the 1970s, his career-defining roles were in the British television series Danger Man and the surreal psychological drama The Prisoner, which he co-created. He was a BAFTA and twice Primetime Emmy Award winner. McGoohan was born in Astoria, New York City, the son of Rose and Thomas McGoohan, who were living in the United States after emigrating from Ireland to seek work, he was brought up as a Catholic. Shortly after he was born, McGoohan's parents moved back to Mullaghmore, County Leitrim and seven years they emigrated to Sheffield, England. McGoohan attended De La Salle College in Sheffield. During World War II, he was evacuated to Leicestershire. There he attended Ratcliffe College, where he excelled in boxing. McGoohan left school at the age of 16 and returned to Sheffield, where he worked as a chicken farmer, a bank clerk, a lorry driver before getting a job as a stage manager at Sheffield Repertory Theatre.
When one of the actors became ill, McGoohan was substituted for him. In 1955, McGoohan starred in a West End production of a play called Serious Charge in the role of a priest accused of being homosexual. Orson Welles was so impressed by McGoohan's stage presence that he cast him as Starbuck in his York theatre production of Moby Dick—Rehearsed. Welles said in 1969 that he believed McGoohan "would now be, I think, one of the big actors of our generation if TV hadn't grabbed him, he can still make it. He was tremendous as Starbuck." and "with all the required attributes, intensity, unquestionable acting ability and a twinkle in his eye."McGoohan's first television appearance was playing Charles Stewart Parnell in "The Fall of Parnell" for You Are There. He had an uncredited role in The Dam Busters, he delivered the line – "Sorry, old boy, it's secret – you can't go in. Now, c'mon, hop it!", cut from some prints of the movie. He had small roles in Passage Home, The Dark Avenger and I Am a Camera.
He could be seen in Zarak for Warwick Films. On TV he was in "Margin for Error" in Terminus, guest starred on The Adventures of Sir Lancelot and Assignment Foreign Legion, The Vise and The Adventures of Aggie, played the lead in "The Makepeace Story" for BBC Sunday Night Theatre, he appeared in Welles' film of Moby Dick Rehearsed. He did Ring for Catty on stage in 1956. While working as a stand-in during screen tests, McGoohan was signed to a contract with the Rank Organisation. Rank put him in villainous parts: High Tide at Noon, directed by Philip Leacock, he had good roles on TV in anthology series such as Television Playwright, Armchair Theatre, ITV Play of the Week and ITV Television Playhouse. McGoohan was given a leading role in Nor the Moon by Night, shot in South Africa. After some clashes with the management, the contract was dissolved. Free of the contract, he did some TV work, winning a BAFTA in 1960, his favourite part for the stage was the lead in Ibsen's Brand. It appeared in a BBC television production in August 1959.
Michael Meyer thought that McGoohan's performance in Meyer's translation of Brand in 1959 was the best and most powerful performance he'd seen. It was McGoohan's last appearance on stage for 28 years. Soon, production executive Lew Grade approached McGoohan about a television series in which he would play a spy named John Drake. Having learned from his experience at the Rank Organisation, he insisted on several conditions in the contract before agreeing to appear in the programme: all the fistfights should be different, the character would always use his brain before using a gun, much to the horror of the executives, no kissing; the series debuted in 1960 as a half-hour programme geared toward an American audience. It did well, but not as well as hoped. Production lasted 39 episodes. After this first series was over, one interviewer asked McGoohan if he would have liked the series to continue, to which he replied, "Perhaps, but let me tell you this: I would rather do twenty TV series than go through what I went through under that Rank contract I signed a few years ago and for which I blame no one but myself."
McGoohan appeared in One Dead, shot in Sweden. He starred in two films directed by Basil Dearden: All Night Long, an updating of Othello, Life for Ruth, he starred in an adaptation of The Quare Fellow by Brendan Behan. McGoohan was one of several actors considered for the role of James Bond in Dr. No. While McGoohan, a Catholic, turned down the role on moral grounds, the success of the Bond films is cited as the reason for Danger Man being revived. McGoohan spent some time working for Disney on The Three Lives of Thomasina and The Scarecrow of Romney Marsh. After he had turned down the role of Simon Templar in The Saint, Lew Grade asked him if he would like to give John Drake another try; this time, McGoohan had more say about the series. Danger Man was resurrected in 1964 as a one-hour programme; the scripts now allowed McGoohan more range in his acting. The popularity of the series led to McGoo
Akiva Goldsman
Akiva J. Goldsman is an American film and television writer and producer known for his work on blockbuster motion pictures and adaptations of popular novels. Goldsman's filmography as a screenwriter includes Batman Forever and its sequel Batman & Robin, I, Robot, I Am Legend, Cinderella Man, numerous rewrites both credited and uncredited, he wrote more than a dozen episodes for the science fiction television series Fringe. In 2002, Goldsman received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay and the Golden Globe Award for Best Screenplay for the 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture. In 2006, Goldsman re-teamed with A Beautiful Mind director Ron Howard to adapt Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code for Howard's film He penned the screenplay for its 2009 prequel Angels & Demons. Raised in Brooklyn Heights, New York, Akiva Goldsman received his bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and attended the graduate fiction writing program at New York University.
Goldsman has a production company at Warner Bros. called Weed Road Pictures. Goldsman produced the Universal Pictures feature Lone Survivor, from writer/director Peter Berg, based on the book Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10 by Marcus Luttrell, it tells the story of Luttrell's Navy SEAL team in 2005 Afghanistan, on a mission to kill a terrorist leader. The movie starred Mark Wahlberg, Emile Hirsch, Ben Foster and Taylor Kitsch, was released in 2013. Goldsman made his feature film directing debut with Winter's Tale, a film adaption of the Mark Helprin novel, The principal cast consisted of Colin Farrell, Russell Crowe, Jessica Brown Findlay, Jennifer Connelly, Will Smith and William Hurt; the film was released on February 14, 2014. He directed the horror thriller film Stephanie, with Frank Grillo in the leading role, co-wrote and produced the film adaptation of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, released on August 4, 2017, was one of Goldsman's post Apotheosis films.
In June 2015, Paramount Pictures announced that Goldsman would head a team of writers and filmmakers to create a multifilm cinematic universe branching out from Hasbro's Transformers franchise. Goldsman was revealed in September 2018 to have been on the writing staff for the new Star Trek series revolving around the years of the character of Jean-Luc Picard. In 2008, Goldsman joined the first season crew of the Fox horror/mystery series Fringe as writer and consulting producer; the first episode Goldsman directed and wrote was "Bad Dreams". In its fifth season, Goldsman remained a consulting producer. Episodes he contributed to included: "Bad Dreams" "The Road Not Taken" "There's More Than One of Everything" "A New Day in the Old Town" "Peter" "Brown Betty" "Over There" "Over There" "Subject 13" "Stowaway" "Lysergic Acid Diethylamide" "The Day We Died" "Neither Here Nor There" "Subject 9" "Making Angels" "Nothing as It Seems" "Letters of Transit" "Brave New World" "Brave New World" Goldsman's second wife, film producer Rebecca Spikings-Goldsman, died of a heart attack on July 6, 2010, at the age of 42.
Rebecca was the daughter of producer Barry Spikings. In 2012, Akiva met his third wife Joann Richter; the couple were married in 2014 and have two daughters, divide their time between Los Angeles and New York. Producer only In 2016, it was announced that Goldsman would script an adaptation of Isaac Asimov's The Caves of Steel, its final release date is still unknown. In July 2017, Paramount Pictures announced plans to make a film adaptation of the novel Rainbow Six by Tom Clancy with Goldsman as producer. Thane, Christopher. "Swimming with sharks". Fade In. Vol. 5 no. 3. P. 17. Divine, Christian. "Peace of mind". Creative Screenwriting. Vol. 9 no. 1. Pp. 69, 71–74. Fleming, Michael. "Good as Goldsman". Fade In. Vol. 9 no. 2. Pp. –52. Akiva Goldsman on IMDb
A Time to Kill (Grisham novel)
A Time to Kill is a 1988 legal thriller by John Grisham. It was Grisham's first novel; the novel was rejected by many publishers before Wynwood Press gave it a modest 5,000-copy printing. When Doubleday published The Firm, Wynwood released a trade paperback of A Time to Kill, which became a bestseller. Dell published the mass market paperback months after the success of The Firm, bringing Grisham to widespread popularity among readers. Doubleday took over the contract for A Time to Kill and released a special hardcover edition. In 1996, the novel was adapted into a namesake film, starring Sandra Bullock, Matthew McConaughey, Samuel L. Jackson. In 2011, it was further adapted into a namesake stage play by Rupert Holmes; the stage production opened at the Arena Stage in Washington, D. C. in May 2011 and opened on Broadway in October 2013. The story takes place in the fictional town of Clanton, Mississippi in the 1980s, a period of time during which racial tension was prevalent in America; this setting is featured in other John Grisham novels.
Three of the characters, Jake Brigance, Harry Rex Vonner and Lucien Wilbanks appear in the 2013 sequel Sycamore Row. Harry Rex Vonner and Lucien Wilbanks appear in Grisham's 2003 novel The Last Juror, set in Clanton in the 1970s. Harry Rex Vonner appears in the 2002 Grisham novel, The Summons, in the short story "Fish Files," in the 2009 collection Ford County. A brief reference to the events depicted in the book is contained in Grisham's 1994 novel The Chamber. In 1984 at the DeSoto County courthouse in Hernando, Grisham witnessed the harrowing testimony of a 12-year-old rape victim; the inspiration came from the case of the rape and assault of 12 year old Marcie Scott and her 16-year-old sister Julie Scott. Unlike Grisham's depiction, the Scotts were white and their assailant, Willie Harris, was black. According to Grisham's official website, Grisham used his spare time to begin his first novel, which "explored what would have happened if the girl's father had murdered her assailants." He spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987.
Grisham has cited Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird as an influence. This book is set in 1984. Another stated inspiration was the success of Presumed Innocent. In the small town of Clanton, in fictional Ford County, Mississippi, a ten-year-old African-American girl named Tonya Hailey is viciously raped and beaten by two white supremacists, James "Pete" Willard and Billy Ray Cobb. Tonya is found and rushed to the hospital while Pete and Billy Ray are heard bragging at a roadside bar about their crime. Tonya's distraught and outraged father, Carl Lee Hailey, consults his friend Jake Brigance, a white attorney who had represented Hailey's brother, on whether he could get himself acquitted if he killed the two men. Jake tells Carl Lee not to do anything stupid, but admits that if it had been his daughter, he would kill the rapists. Carl Lee is determined to avenge Tonya and, while Pete and Billy Ray are being led into holding after their bond hearing, he kills both men with an M16 rifle. Carl Lee is charged with capital murder.
Despite efforts to persuade Carl Lee to retain high-powered attorneys, he elects to be represented by Jake. Helping Jake are two loyal friends, disbarred attorney Lucien Wilbanks and sleazy divorce lawyer Harry Rex Vonner; the team is assisted by liberal law student Ellen Roark, who has prior experience with death penalty cases and offers her services as a temporary clerk pro bono. Ellen appears to be interested in Jake romantically; the team receives some illicit behind-the-scenes help from black county sheriff Ozzie Walls, a figure beloved by the black community and well respected by the white community who upholds the law by arresting Carl Lee but, as the father of two daughters of his own supports Carl Lee and gives him special treatment while in jail and goes out of the way to assist Jake in any way he can. Carl Lee is prosecuted by Ford County's corrupt district attorney, Rufus Buckley, who hopes that the case will boost his political career, it is claimed that the judge presiding over Carl Lee's trial, Omar "Ichabod" Noose, has been intimidated by local white supremacist elements.
This proves true when, despite having no history of racist inclinations in his rulings, Noose refuses Jake's reasonable request for a change of venue though the racial make-up of Ford County guarantees an all-white jury. Billy Ray's brother, seeks revenge against Carl Lee, enlisting the help of the Mississippi branch of the Ku Klux Klan and its Grand Dragon, Stump Sisson. Subsequently, the KKK attempts to plant a bomb beneath Jake's porch, leading him to send his wife and daughter out of town until the trial is over; the KKK attacks Jake's secretary, Ethel Twitty, kills her frail husband, Bud. They burn crosses in the yards of potential jurors to intimidate them. On the day the trial begins, a riot erupts between the KKK and the area's black residents outside of the courthouse. Believing that the black people are at fault for Stump's death and the KKK increase their attacks; as a result, the National Guard is called to Clanton to keep the peace during Carl Lee's trial. Undeterred, Freddy continues his efforts to get revenge for Billy Ray's death.
The KKK shoots at Jake one morning as he is being escorted into the courthouse, missing Jake but wounding one of the guardsmen assigned to protect him. Soon after, Ellen Roark is kidnapped. One night, the jury’s spokesman is threatened by KKK with a knife, they burn down Jake's house. They torture and murder "Mickey Mouse", one of Jake‘s former client
Brenda Fricker
Brenda Fricker is an Irish actress of 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 Academy Award, earning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in My Left Foot; as of 2014, she has tentatively retired from acting. Fricker was born in Ireland, her mother, "Bina", was a teacher at Stratford College, her father, Desmond Frederick Fricker, was an officer in the Department of Agriculture and a journalist for The Irish Times. Before becoming an actress, Fricker was assistant to the art editor of the Irish Times, with hopes to become a reporter. At age 19, she became an actress "by chance", her feature film career began with a small uncredited part in the 1964 film Of Human Bondage, based on the 1915 novel by W. Somerset Maugham, she appeared in Tolka Row, Ireland's first soap opera. One of Fricker's first TV roles was staff nurse Maloney in Coronation Street, debuting on 10 January 1977.
Brenda's character attended on the birth of Tracy Barlow on 24 January 1977's episode. Fricker came to wider public attention in the United Kingdom in another nursing role, as Megan Roach in the BBC One television drama series Casualty. Fricker bowed out as Megan in December 1990, after playing the character in 65 episodes, because she believed her character had "started off with a wonderful sense of humour, lost it all and all she seemed to do was push a trolley around and offer tea and sympathy". In February 1998 she appeared in two episodes, with Megan attending the wedding of her former colleagues Charlie Fairhead and Barbara'Baz' Samuels. In 2007, she returned for a single episode for Red Nose Day; the episode was written by Richard Curtis. Fricker's final appearance as Megan was in August 2010, when the character took a lethal cocktail of drugs to end her life. Fricker found international acclaim after she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in 1990 for her performance as Christy Brown's mother in My Left Foot.
In her acceptance speech, Brenda thanked Christy Brown "just for being alive" and dedicated the Oscar to Mrs. Brown, saying "Anybody who gives birth twenty-two times deserves one of these". For her performance Brenda was nominated for a Golden Globe Award and she won the Los Angeles Film Critics Association Award for Best Supporting Actress as well, she rejoined My Left Foot's writer/director Jim Sheridan to make the 1990 film The Field, starring alongside Richard Harris as Maggie McCabe. She continued her television work during this period, starring in the Australian-produced short series Brides of Christ, she co-starred in the 1992 TV miniseries Seekers alongside Josette Simon, produced by Sarah Lawson. Buoyed by her Oscar win, Fricker went on to appear in several high-profile Hollywood films, most notably 1992's Home Alone 2: Lost in New York as the Central Park Pigeon Lady. In 1993, she portrayed May Mackenzie, the Weekly World News-obsessed Scottish mother of Mike Myers' Charlie Mackenzie, in So I Married an Axe Murderer, portrayed Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character's motherly caretaker Maggie in the 1994 family comedy Angels in the Outfield.
One of her last Hollywood film roles came with A Time to Kill, as Ethel Twitty, after which she has focused exclusively on film and television work in Canada and the United Kingdom. In 2003, she played mother of Veronica Guerin in the film of the same name, she played nurse Eileen in the film Inside I'm Dancing. In 2007, she starred in How About You the film based on a short story about people living in a residential nursing home written by Maeve Binchy, playing Heather Nightangle. Other important roles were Omagh in 2004 as police Ombudsman Nuala O' Loan, as Graiine McFadden in the TV docudrama No Tears about the women treated with the blood product Anti D in the seventies, contaminated with Hepatitis C, as Aunt Maeve in Durango in 1999, based on the novel by John B. Keane. Fricker has appeared in Closing the Ring, Richard Attenborough's post-Second World War drama starring Shirley MacLaine, Christopher Plummer and Mischa Barton. In 2012 a high-profile supporting role in Albert Nobbs earned Fricker an Irish Film Award nomination, along with Olympia Dukakis she became half of the first pair of Oscar-winning actors to play a same-sex couple in Cloudburst, a cultural milestone for the LGBT community that won awards worldwide Fricker lives in the Liberties in Dublin.
She was married to director Barry Davies. She says that her loves include her pet dogs, drinking Guinness, reading poetry and playing snooker.. In 2012, Fricker said "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." At the National Theatre The Plough and the Stars Lavender Blue At the Royal Court Theatre Within Two Shadows A Pagan's Place At the Geffen Playhouse Cat on a Hot Tin Roof OtherTyphad Mary Macbeth Outskirts TV Times The Accrington Pals The Irish Play Lost World The Weeping of Angels List of people on stamps of Ireland Brenda Fricker on IMDb MSN Movies profile Fricker at HOLBY. TV
