Actor Jessie Buckley completed an award season sweep at the Oscars thanks to her acclaimed performance in the historical drama Hamnet.
Buckley, 36, won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the historical drama Hamnet. Starring opposite Paul Mescal, the Irish actor portrays William Shakespeare’s wife, Agnes (also called Anne Hathaway) in the movie about the playwright and his family. She had already won Golden Globe, BAFTA, Critics Choice, and Actor awards for the part before taking home her biggest honor of all on Sunday.
Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s best-selling 2020 novel of the same name and directed by Chloé Zhao, the film reimagines Shakespeare and Hathaway’s life following the tragic loss of their 11-year-old son, Hamnet. But portraying Hathaway was more than just a part for Buckley—it was a transformative learning experience.
“Chloé and Maggie, to get to know this incandescent woman and journey to understand the capacity of a mother’s love is the greatest collision of my life,” Buckley said during her acceptance speech. “It’s Mother’s Day in the U.K. today, so I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.”
Before her role in Hamnet, Buckley first gained recognition for her versatile roles and emotionally charged performances in films like The Lost Daughter and Women Talking, as well as the TV series Chernobyl and Fargo. She currently stars in The Bride!, a modern interpretation of the Frankenstein story also starring Christian Bale.
Here’s what else you should know about Jessie Buckley.
Part of Biography.com’s special coverage of Hamnet, exploring how the 2025 film reimagines Shakespeare’s family, grief, and the world that shaped his work.
Buckley competed on a British talent show
Buckley began her career as a contestant on BBC talent show I’d Do Anything in 2008 at 18 years old. Competing for the chance to play Nancy in a West End revival of the musical Oliver!, the young actor finished in second place. While she was offered the opportunity to be Nancy’s understudy, she turned it down and soon made her West End debut in Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music later that year.
She got her start as a Shakespeare actor
From there, Buckley embarked on a successful career on the stage. After graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in 2013, she went on to perform at Shakespeare’s Globe, a reconstruction of the Globe Theatre, playing Miranda in The Tempest, and appeared in another production, Henry V, in the West End. Two years later, Buckley took on the role of Perdita in a 2015 revival of The Winter’s Tale.
Her breakout was role was in Wild Rose
She soon made her feature film debut in the 2017 psychological thriller Beast before landing her breakout role in the 2018 musical film Wild Rose, in which she portrayed a Scottish mother who pursues her dream of becoming a country singer after getting out of prison.
“The minute I read the script, I just was so excited and unnerved, and thrilled by this boisterous, flawed, human, raw, courageous young mother,” Buckley told Time magazine in June 2019. “Rose is so alive and so human and real. All of the women in the film were breaking outside of the four walls of where they were told they were allowed to exist in and dream in.” For her performance, she earned a 2020 BAFTA nomination for Best Leading Actress.
Buckley was previously nominated for an Oscar
After appearing in Chernobyl (2019) and Fargo (2020), Buckley returned to Shakespeare in a 2021 TV movie adaptation of Romeo & Juliet, alongside British actor Josh O’Connor. That same year, she played the younger version of Olivia Colman’s Leda in the Maggie Gyllenhaal film The Lost Daughter, for which she received her first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. To Buckley’s luck, it was Colman who suggested her for the role in the first place.
“I have no idea what Olivia saw in me,” she told Vanity Fair in March 2022. “We had a very fun night out at a festival the summer before [filming] and sang Adele and Amy Winehouse in an Airstream ’til 7:00 in the morning, so maybe it was my karaoke that made her think I fit the bill.”
She filmed Hamnet after completing The Bride!
Apparently impressed with Buckley, director Gyllenhaal chose the actor to star in another of her movies as the titular character in The Bride!, inspired by the 1935 horror movie Bride of Frankenstein. Set in 1930s Chicago, the film sees a mad scientist create a companion for Frankenstein’s monster (Bale) by bringing a murdered woman back to life. The Bride! is currently in theaters.
The movie is very different tonally from Hamnet, for which Buckley began rehearsals only two weeks after completion. “I was very nervous about that. I was like, it's a jump,” she told Entertainment Weekly. “The Bride! is like having your hands in an electrical current, that's got petrol running through it, and you're just, like, soaring on acid. You're just in another stratosphere of life. And then Hamnet’s, like putting your hands into clay and Earth.”
Hamnet was nominated for eight Academy Awards at the March 15 ceremony, including Best Picture and Best Director for Zhao, but Buckley was the only winner from the drama. She previously spoke about how much the performance affected her away from the cameras.
“What was revealed to me through her [Agnes] was a tenderness that I didn’t know I needed to learn and live in. And that tenderness has changed me,” she said at the movie’s London Film Festival premiere in October 2025. “It really reminded me of how potent and powerful storytelling can be. And it's kind of set a bar, like, I only want to make films that are as brave and as human as this from now on.”
Who is Jessie Buckley’s husband Freddie Sorensen?
One of the more wholesome moments from Buckley’s Oscar acceptance speech was her acknowledgement of husband, Freddie Sorensen, and their daughter, Isla.
“Fred, I love you man. I love you. You’re the most incredible dad,” she said. “You’re my best friend, and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you.”
Buckley has shared few details about her family, previously referring to Sorensen, a mental health worker, only by his first name in public interviews. According to Metro, she revealed he is from the Islington borough of London, and the pair met on a blind date. They married in 2023, and Buckley confirmed the birth of their daughter Isla in October 2025.
"The best thing about being a mom is just when even when you're having a hard day, they give you these otherworldly little smiles and make your heart crack into a thousand pieces, and you think, ‘Oh, it's all going to be okay,’” Buckley told Elle.
Catherine Caruso joined the Biography.com staff in August 2024, having previously worked as a freelance journalist for several years. She is a graduate of Syracuse University, where she studied English literature. When she’s not working on a new story, you can find her reading, hitting the gym, or watching too much TV.
