The rise of Jessie Buckley – from reality TV to Hamnet and Oscars history

In an unusually unpredictable Oscars race, there is only one moment experts agree is a dead cert – Jessie Buckley, on stage once again, to collect the award for best actress.

The big honours started with a Critics Choice award in January. A Golden Globe followed, then a BAFTA, and most recently, a statuette at the Actor Awards.

Buckley is the only acting nominee to take home all four this year, and she has picked up other smaller awards, too. The Oscar, it seems, is hers to lose.

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Gold Derby, the LA based authority when it comes to awards predictions, rates her chance of winning at an almost unbeatable 97%. “It’s really been a crazy award season, it’s been pretty unprecedented,” says Debra Birnbaum, the site’s editor-in-chief. But Buckley, she says, “is a sure thing… a pretty safe bet”.

If Buckley does win, she will make history – the first Irish actress ever to take home the award.

The 36-year-old is being recognised for her portrayal of Agnes, the wife of Shakespeare in Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet. The film chronicles the couple’s grief following the death of their young son, and puts the bard, played by Paul Mescal, in the backseat as Agnes’s story takes centre stage. Buckley’s raw, emotive performance has moved audiences to tears.

In a sea of A-list Oscar nominees, including two-time winner Emma Stone, critics have singled her out as “one of the finest actresses of her generation”.

“To be in a room with all those incredible artists, that, for me, is the greatest thing,” Buckley told Sky News last month, speaking about her awards and nominations. “That and being a mom.”

The actress gave birth to her first child, a girl, last year, and she has paid tribute to her in her speeches so far. “I’d like to share this with my daughter,” she said of her BAFTA. “I promise to continue to be disobedient so that you can belong to a world in all your mad, complex wildness as a young woman.”

This is Buckley’s second Oscar nomination; her first was for best supporting actress, for her performance in The Lost Daughter, starring Olivia Colman, in 2022. She has also starred in other Oscar-nominated films, such as Women Talking, alongside Rooney Mara and Claire Foy, and Judy, opposite Renee Zellweger, and won several awards for her leading performance in the West End revival of Cabaret.

But she has been quietly honing her talents since she was young, growing up in Killarney, Co Kerry. Her rise to fame came when she was a teenager, appearing on the BBC reality show I’d Do Anything, which sought to find an unknown lead to play Nancy in the West End revival of the musical Oliver!, in 2008.

Buckley came second, but continued to pursue her love for the stage and screen. She went on to appear in series including Taboo and The Last Post, before breakout roles in British films Beast and Wild Rose, and the critically acclaimed HBO/ Sky series Chernobyl.

Back in 2019, when Wild Rose was released, Buckley said she grew up without a TV at home until she was “about eight or nine”, and that her first experience of wanting to act was watching a “Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland film… it was like my mind had been exploded into kind of like magic”.

Now, not only has she reached the highest accolades for her achievements on screen, but she is also a Mercury Prize nominee, too – shortlisted in 2022 for her collaborative album For All Our Days That Tear The Heart, with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler.

‘You couldn’t take your eyes off her’

For those who knew her at the Ursuline Secondary School, in Co Tipperary, her success has come as no surprise. Music teacher Joan Butler, who joined the school in 2006, Buckley’s final year, says it was clear she would go on to big things.

“We’re so proud of all our students here, but Jessie stood out… even as she began along her career path, as being somebody with a very special talent,” she says. “She was in a production of West Side Story in my first year teaching… Spellbinding is the word we use here as we’ve been talking about her and remembering her time here.

“You couldn’t take your eyes off Jessie on the stage or when she was singing or even at the piano. It’s a star quality that is very, very rare. I can still remember I was playing violin in the pit orchestra, looking up the stage… the whole room just stopped, mouths open, watching this rehearsal. And I remember turning to some of the students and going, watch her girls, she’s going to win an Oscar one day.”

Now, Buckley could very well achieve that dream.

After seeing the actress tackling such physically and emotionally demanding scenes during the filming of Hamnet, her cast and crewmates say it has been incredible to see her hard work and talent recognised.

Hamnet set decorator Alice Felton, who is also up for an Oscar herself, nominated in the production design category, says they have “all been in tears” watching Buckley receive her awards.

“Because we watched her throughout filming give her heart and soul to that,” she says. “We’d be crying at the edge of set before the music was laid in, before everything was done.

“She’s a beautiful person. She gave everything to that role and she’s part of the team. She used to sleep in the bed in the attic [in their house in the film]. So I’d go up to redress the set and she’d be tucked up having a little nap. She just lived in the spaces and we’re all so happy for her.”

Irish stars show support in LA

In Los Angeles in the days leading up to the Oscars ceremony each year, the US-Ireland Alliance hosts the Oscar Wilde Awards, celebrating Irish talent.

They have had a lot to toast in recent years, including nine nominations for The Banshees Of Inisherin (starring another former Ursuline pupil, Kerry Condon) in 2023. And in 2024, Cillian Murphy became the first Irish star to win best actor, for his performance in Oppenheimer.

This year, Buckley is the person everyone is talking about.

Gleeson, who starred alongside her in the animated Christmas special The Scarecrows’ Wedding, told Sky News: “We’re already celebrating Jessie Buckley.

“She is an absolutely amazing actor. She’s so incredible in the film and I’ll be delighted, delighted if she wins. But we celebrate her all the time.”

Singer-songwriter Dermot Kennedy also highlighted Buckley’s musical talents. “I think people are largely unaware of how great a singer she is,” he said. “She’s just an incredibly talented person, so we’re very excited for her.”

And speaking at the premiere of the Peaky Blinders film earlier this month, Murphy himself showed his support. “She’s incredible,” he told Sky News. “I’m just so happy for her, she’s unbelievable in that film.”

For the young students at Ursuline hoping to follow in Buckley’s footsteps, the actress is an inspiration.

“We are so excited to see everything that will come after this as well,” Ms Butler says. “Thank you so much to her for everything that she has done in inspiring our students and showing them what can be possible.”

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