‘These are her people’: Friends and neighbours remember ‘Queen of the Liberties’ Brenda Fricker

The street-lined crowd claps as the funeral cortege passes. Inside the church the service is simple but beautifulThe funeral of actor Brenda Fricker. Photographs: Dara Mac Donaill People gathered along Meath Street to say goodbye to their friend and neighbour, 81-year-old Brenda Fricker, known to the rest of us as the Oscar-winning star of My Left Foot, The Field, So I Married an Axe Murder and countless other films and TV shows. Everyone seems to know her well. Flower seller Catherine O’Connor says: “She just pottered around here like the rest of us. She was a great friend of my late mother [Kathleen Farrell]. They’d sit all day having the chats.” Sarah Conway is giving out copies of a poem she wrote about her. On the railings of St Catherine’s Church are some art works created by local children in her honour. Outside Catherine’s Café some people who knew her are trying to explain who she is to two curious German tourists. “What’s the name of the young fellah who was in that film with her?” asks Brian O’Neill, a former butcher. “MacCauley something,” says Sandra McAvoy (they are referring to Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone 2). READ MORE“She was like a queen around here,” says dapper and waistcoated 79-year-old Jimmy Doona, who used to walk his dog with Fricker, and her dog Juno. “The Queen of the Liberties.” “But there was nothing grand about her,” says McAvoy. “No airs and graces.”Peter McSherry approaches Doona and says: “Brenda said you owe her a few hundred quid. She left it to me. Pay when you have a chance.” Doona laughs. “This is what she wanted,” says Doona. “These are her people.”“She was the real thing,” says McSherry. The gathered crowd claps as the funeral cortege passes and arrives at the church. Inside, the service is simple but beautiful. Overseen by Msgr Eoin Thynne and Fr Seán Donoghue and with music from Frankie Gavin, Catherine McHugh and Liz Duffy, the chief mourners are her niece Billie and nephew Chimo. Her brother-in-law Axel couldn’t be there. Oscar-winning actor Brenda Fricker died on July 16th. Photograph: Stephen Collins/Collins Photos Pictures by children honouring Brenda Fricker at St Catherine's Church, Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill / The Irish Times Pictures by children honouring Brenda Fricker at St Catherine's Church, Dublin. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill / The Irish Times Meath Street poet Sarah Conway hanging up a poem she wrote about about Brenda Fricker. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times The service features a speech from her very close friend Liz Duffy (mother of her aforementioned namesake) who reinforces the local nature of the event with a list of Liberties’ businesses that Fricker loved, and insisted be mentioned (including Rachel’s chipper where her dog Juno got her treats). She ends with an entreaty from Fricker for everyone to smile and be happy. “Be happy for her today,” Duffy adds, “because she is out of pain.” [ The Swallow review: Brenda Fricker holds the screen as few others couldOpens in new window ]Her friend Tadgh O’Sullivan, who directed Fricker’s final film, The Swallow, speaks about her attentiveness and her ability to “see and hear people” and how she, in return, insisted on being seen and heard. The director Virginia Gilbert notes how Fricker was “ferocious in her friendships”. She references the poem If by Rudyard Kipling before imagining Fricker commenting in disapproval of such Englishness with the words: “Where’s the fecking Heaney?” She reads Jenny Joseph’s poem Warning that opens with the line: “When I am an old woman I shall wear purple”, a poem Fricker loved, kept forgetting the name of and which had to be frequently re-emailed to her.[ Brenda Fricker: ‘It was real violence, and I needed protection. Where was my father? There was blood all over me’Opens in new window ]Fr Donoghue reads a prayer of thanks from Fricker herself, thanking her family, the community of the arts, the people of the Liberties, her dog Juno and all the dogs she ever owned. There are several references over the course of the ceremony to her angry insistence that nobody contact her before noon and a substantial chunk of the church laugh with recognition. The wicker coffin leaves the church to the sounds of Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley. Brendan Gleeson at the funeral of Oscar-winning actor Brenda Fricker. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times Jim and Peter Sheridan at the funeral of Oscar-winning actor Brenda Fricker. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times Ray D'Arcy at the funeral of Oscar-winning actor Brenda Fricker. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times Joan Bergin at the funeral of Oscar-winning actor Brenda Fricker. Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill/The Irish Times It’s only afterwards, as people mill around outside, that well-known figures appear among the crowd. The actor Brendan Gleeson is asked for repeated selfies by the locals. The brothers Peter and Jim Sheridan (for whose film, My Left Foot, Fricker won her Oscar) talk to other mourners. Presenter Ray D’Arcy notes sadly that it’s the second funeral for an Oscar winner he has attended in a week (musician Glen Hansard was put to rest on Tuesday). Fricker’s close friend, the award-winning costume designer Joan Bergin (who Fricker said deserved her own book) says she was good at everything: acting, swimming, snooker. “She would out-snooker all the men.” The street erupts into applause again as the hearse drives away. The man next to me films on his phone. “There she goes,” he says for his video, “a legend.” IN THIS SECTION