The funeral of Oscar-winning Irish actress Brenda Fricker has begun in the Dublin neighbourhood where she grew up, with mourners told the star wanted a send-off marked by ‘smiles and laughter’.

Fricker, who died at the age of 81, is being remembered at St Catherine’s Church in the Liberties today.

She died at Our Lady’s Hospice in Harold’s Cross on July 16 after a period of ill-health.

Acclaimed actor Brendan Gleeson was among those to arrive at the church, joining family, friends and members of the public for the mass.

Welcoming mourners, the priest celebrating the service said Fricker ‘lived a life full to the brim’, and had asked for ‘no tears, no sadness, no fuss’.

Her best friend, Liz Duffy, told the congregation that the actress, who planned her own funeral, wanted the day filled with smiles and laughter, and said she was now ‘out of her pain and misery’.

Ms Duffy thanked those who had featured in Fricker’s life, among them musician Frankie Gavin, who is performing at the mass.

Fricker won the Academy Award for best supporting actress for My Left Foot in 1989, playing the mother of Christy Brown, the Dublin writer and artist with cerebral palsy portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis.

She reached new audiences three years later as the Pigeon Lady in the 1992 sequel Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, and was part of the original cast of the BBC medical drama Casualty.

Her screen work spanned Veronica Guerin (2003) alongside Cate Blanchett, Coronation Street, Upstairs, Downstairs, and later roles in the adaptation of Graham Norton’s novel Holding and the Channel 5 drama The Catch.

Her agent, Phil Belfield, led the tributes to the Dublin-born actress, calling her a ‘legend’ he was ‘honoured to know’.

The service continues on Thursday morning.