Jessie Buckley, Hollywood’s new breakout star: From near-obscurity to Oscar frontrunner

Jessie Buckley’s story is one of those ordinary tales that are fascinating precisely because they are ordinary. The biggest surprise that could happen at the upcoming Oscars on March 15 isn’t that someone wins an unexpected Oscar — it’s that she might lose. In just a few months, the 36-year-old Irish actress has gone from being virtually unknown to dominating awards season. She has won it all: the Golden Globe, the Critics’ Choice, the Gotham, countless guild awards, and in recent days, the British BAFTA and the Screen Actors Guild award. And if nothing stands in her way, next Sunday she will take the stage — smiling, nervous, and as genuine as ever — with the first Oscar of her career.

Although she’s now Hollywood’s darling, Buckley’s path to success hasn’t been easy. In fact, she doesn’t seem to attach much importance to Hollywood. She lives in a dilapidated 15th-century farmhouse in the heart of the British countryside. Her husband is a complete unknown. She’s not overly concerned with fashion, nor — for now — does she do advertising campaigns. She has experienced periods of obscurity and depression, as she herself has shared.

Her ability to transform herself — her constantly changing hair, her chameleon-like accents — has brought her to where she is today, but her career has been growing and evolving for over a decade, in theater, television, and even music. Many people don’t even remember, but this is actually her second Oscar nomination. The first, for The Lost Daughter four years ago, was a long shot. This time, it would be surprising if she didn’t win. Her portrayal of William Shakespeare’s wife Agnes in Hamnet has pushed her career to new heights.

From the moment she acquired the rights to Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, the film’s director, Chloé Zhao, knew that Buckley had to play this wise, introspective, almost mystical woman — a loving, grieving mother. The actress was at the Telluride Festival in Colorado, promoting her film Women Talking (2022), for which Sarah Polley won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay (it was also nominated for Best Picture). While taking a group photo with co-stars like Claire Foy and Rooney Mara, she noticed Zhao waving at her.

Buckley wasn’t sure if the greeting was meant for her — but it was. They arranged to have breakfast together. At that point, Buckley hadn’t yet read the novel. But by the time Zhao came to discuss it more deeply at her home in Norfolk, she had devoured it in a single night. When the director saw her cooking, sprinkling spices into the stew, she couldn’t help but say, half-joking, half-serious: “Yes, the witch is alive!” They sat by the fire, talking about love, life, death, grief, art, and loss, and realized that they’d forged a connection.

She may not have known much about Agnes, but Buckley was well-versed in Shakespeare and his work. The daughter of a poet (and bar manager) and an opera singer and vocal coach, she grew up in southern Ireland as the eldest of five children. She wasn’t academically gifted. What she loved was playing the harp, clarinet, and piano, practicing until the early hours in the school classrooms. She didn’t fit in, as she has shared on more than one occasion, and began to self-harm and fall into depression.

She decided to move to London and try to get into acting school; she didn’t succeed. But as she left the audition, she saw posters for a reality show searching for leads in a new version of Oliver! She finished second, and was immediately noticed by the industry. She began performing in small musical theater venues and singing jazz at the exclusive Annabel’s club at night. She earned so little that she often had to walk home, even though it was over two hours away.

But her talent didn’t go unnoticed, and a patron, a wealthy lawyer, took her under his wing. He decided to pay her rent, expenses, and tuition for the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Britain’s top acting school. Despite several panic attacks and moments when she wanted to quit, she graduated in 2013, and slowly, doors began to open for her.

Theater doors, naturally, with classics like Romeo and Juliet (opposite Josh O’Connor) and Cabaret in the West End — but she was also cast in film and television roles. At first, she took on smaller, independent projects. Then came the BBC’s 2016 adaptation of War and Peace with Lily James, Paul Dano, and Callum Turner, as well as Chernobyl and Fargo. On the big screen, Colette (2020) with Keira Knightley, Women Talking, and especially The Lost Daughter (2021) brought her widespread recognition.

It was on that last film, directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, that Buckley met some of her now closest colleagues. Olivia Colman, for instance, told Vogue that Buckley is an “all-in friend” and “fucking hilarious right down to her bones.” On set, Buckley also struck up a friendship with Paul Mescal. Though they had no scenes together, the two would laugh and smoke together on Colman’s balcony. Little did they know that, five years later, life would bring them together as Agnes and William Shakespeare in Hamnet. Today, they’re inseparable. Their trust in each other is complete.

“I could drink you like water!” Buckley affectionately shouted at Mescal while accepting her Golden Globe.

“I feel and hope we will meet many, many times and go on very transformative journeys together, because that’s what this experience was,” she told Deadline. "I think he’s the most extraordinary man. I think he’s an incredible actor."

Mescal, for his part, told Vogue: “In terms of her confidence in her artistry [and] her lack of interest in the shiny things that this career can offer people. She’s a mountain of a human being.”

When she was 22, and her agent approached her about going to Hollywood — a dream for so many others — she had the courage to say no. Had someone told her then where she would be now, she probably would have laughed. At the time, she found it “intimidating,” “exotic and far away,” as she said. Today, she blends in almost seamlessly, yet still feels like an observer, someone distant. Her colleagues, by contrast, see her as a key piece of the puzzle.

Just a couple of weeks before fully diving into Hamnet, she wrapped The Bride!, again under Maggie Gyllenhaal’s direction, and again in an unusual way. She has said that the studio didn’t want her as the lead — the dark, unbridled bride of Frankenstein — because she wasn’t yet popular enough and didn’t have the social media reach to match Christian Bale, Penélope Cruz, and Annette Bening. But Gyllenhaal insisted she wouldn’t make the film without her.

A few days after wrapping The Bride!, she was already filming Hamnet, and the rest is history. It wasn’t easy — Buckley chose to isolate herself during the shoot, staying in a cabin rather than returning to the city and her loved ones. In 2023, she married her husband, Freddie, a mental health worker she met on a blind date, about whom she reveals very little. They prefer to keep their relationship private, though he is often seen with her at premieres and events, carrying their baby.

In September 2024, just days after finishing her role in Hamnet, Buckley learned she was pregnant. The story of the film, in which the death of children is central, didn’t deter her from wanting a family — it instead sparked a “deep need” to become a mother, she told Vogue. Today, she travels the world with her little one, caring for her between interviews. Smiling, like a normal person — something so rare to see in Hollywood.

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