BRENDA Fricker has revealed that her Oscar award now “holds her bathroom door open” as she reminisced about the ceremony she attended in 1990.
The film star became the first ever Irish actress to bag an Academy Award for best supporting actress in My Left Foot.
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But Brenda, 75, admitted that the actual award makes “a great heavy weight”.
Appearing on the Tommy Tiernan Show last night, Tommy asked if she’d won the prestigious gong.
She said: “I did, it’s holding the bathroom door open.
“It’s a great heavy weight I must say. It’s very heavy.
“Well nobody believes me when I say that I didn’t think I was going to win because everybody says that.
“We got five nominations for the film which is extraordinary when you think of it and Daniel [Day Lewis] was the one that was going to win – that was the one we talked about in all the publicity. The two actors were Daniel and myself.
“It never crossed my mind that there was a chance in hell that my name was going to come out and I’ll tell you why.”
NOT EXPECTING WIN
Brenda explained that she’d had to “very large Bloody Marys” before her name was called.
She said: “They have the breaks and they have the people who sit in your seats.
“I went out and I had a very large bloody Mary, delighted with myself, thinking, ‘God this is a great nigh. Look there’s Jane Fonda. Isn’t this lovely?’
“Came back in and sat down for the second half and then there was another break and I had another very large bloody Mary, I don’t know who was with me.
“I was getting a little tipsy and then I went back in and I thought, ‘Who’s up next now?’ and then it was me.
“Tommy, if I had thought there was one chance of my having to get up on that stage and talk to a thousand film stars, I wouldn’t even have smelled alcohol.
“So that’s my real proof that I didn’t expect it.”
She added: “Kevin Kline who presented to me was so lovely, he took me quickly aside and he got one of the huge black drapes and he put it around the two of us and he said, ‘This is the last private moment you’re going to have Brenda. You’ve just won and Oscar’.
COMFORTING AL PACINO
“Then when you go off, it’s like walking into an eye of a storm.”
She also recalled a hilarious run in she’d had with Al Pacino at the Oscars the following year.
She said on the hit RTE show: “Then you go back to present the next year.
“They give you the envelope you know and about 25 security men around you. I remember I had to go down to the toilet, the ladies toilets was downstairs.
“[I was] coming out and I had the envelope and I saw out of the corner of my eye this elderly man on the banisters. It looked like he was in trouble.
“I said, ‘Hold on a minute’. and I went over and said, ‘Are you alright?’
“This face came up and it was Al Pacino who was nominated that year.
“He said, ’11 times I’ve been nominated, and I…’
“But I said, ‘But you’re going to win, this is the envelope’. I said, ‘Your name is in here no problem with that’.
“I said, ‘Look I know, I’ve seen the film. There’s no way…you’re going to win no problem at all’.
“And he kind of cheered up and I went off.
“When it came to do it, out I go anyway. ‘And the Oscar goes to… Joe Pesci’.
“I could see Al Pacino sitting there and then Joe Pesci came up to get his Oscar.
RUN IN WITH DE NIRO
“He was so surprised that he couldn’t speak at all.
“He just said, ‘Thank you’ and walked off.
“So I did the same thing as Kevin Kline did, I grabbed the big black thing and put it around him and I said, ‘This is the last private moment you’re ever going to have’.
“And he bawled crying and Joe Pesci’s a toughie.”
She revealed that she was later summoned to Robert De Niro’s table.
Brenda said: “Then there’s the Governor’s ball and all these very well dressed young Italian boys kept coming up to say, ‘Bob wants a word with you’.
“This is of course Robert De Niro and I said, ‘Oh I’m busy. I’m grand here’.
“And they said, ‘He wants you to join him at the table’.
“I said, ‘Look I’m having a grand time. Thank him very much from me, goodbye now’.
“And this went on and I said, ‘OK’ so I went over and you’d think he was God the way the Italian mafia’s sitting around him.”
She laughed: “He said, ‘Sit down’ and I said, ‘No I’m not sitting down. I’m having a pint over there with my friend’.
“He just kind of said thank you and I said, ‘Look, he’s grand. He’s going to go up and present one and he’ll be in better form so good luck now’.
“And I went off. Wouldn’t like to be sitting at that table for too long.”
