“Hamnet” star Jessie Buckley won the Best Actress Oscar at Sunday night’s Academy Awards, becoming the first Irish actress to win the award.
This was Buckley’s second Oscar nomination. She was previously nominated for Best Supporting Actress for “The Lost Daughter.”
Buckley’s Best Actress win was perhaps the only key in an increasingly unpredictable awards race. After all, she swept all the Best Actress awards at major award ceremonies, including the SAG-AFTRA Actor Awards, BAFTA Awards, Critics Choice Awards, and Golden Globe Awards. Still, when the streak culminated at the 98th Oscars ceremony, held at Hollywood’s Dolby Theater and hosted by comedian Conan O’Brien, who was the host for the second year in a row, Buckley was visibly moved to hear his name read.
“This is truly amazing,” Buckley began, thanking fellow nominees Rose Byrne (I’d Kick You If I Had Legs), Kate Hudson (Song San Bleu), Renate Reinsv (Sentimental Value) and Emma Stone (Bugonia). “I am inspired by your art and your hearts and would love to work with each of you,” she said.
Mr Buckley said his entire family was in the audience because “Ireland bought us a plane ticket”. She looked up to the balcony to see if she could find them and said, “Mom and Dad, thank you for teaching us to dream and to value our passions instead of being defined by expectations.”
“I love you, I love you. You’re the most amazing dad. You’re my best friend. I want to have 20,000 more babies with you,” she said to her husband, Freddie Sorensen, who watched in tears from the “Hamnet” corner. Though her daughter wasn’t in the auditorium, Buckley made sure to mention her on stage, joking that she “has no idea what’s going on and is probably dreaming about milk,” but said it was “kind of a big deal” for her mother to win an Oscar.
“To Hamnet director Chloé Zhao and author/co-writer Maggie O’Farrell,” she said, “getting to know this incandescent woman and going on a journey to understand a mother’s capacity for love is the greatest conflict of my life.”
The timing of this honor is also particularly significant, as it is Mother’s Day in the UK, and “I want to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of my mother’s heart,” Buckley said. “We all belong to a lineage of women who continue to create despite adversity.”
In Hamnet, directed by Oscar winner Chao, Buckley plays Agnes, a woman who falls in love with a poor Latin governess named William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal), who later becomes a famous playwright. In this historical fiction film, a couple marries and has three children, but tragedy strikes when their only son, 11-year-old Hamnet, dies of the plague. The film depicts a family’s grief over a devastating loss and how that tragedy influenced Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, and Buckley’s raw and emotional performance captivated audiences.
The Focus Features film was nominated for eight Oscars this year, including Best Picture, Best Director (Chao), and Best Adapted Screenplay (Chao and Maggie O’Farrell), as well as Best Original Score, Casting, Costume Design, and Production Design.
“Hamnet” premiered at the Telluride Film Festival last August, where Buckley’s performance was immediately hailed as an Oscar nominee. The film was a breakthrough moment for the star, who had already given stellar performances in Women Talking and Wild Roses. Buckley’s latest film, The Bride, will be released just before Oscar Sunday! “A reunion with Maggie Gyllenhaal, director of “The Lost Daughter”” was released in theaters. She will next be seen in Alice Rohrwacker’s The Incest Sisters, co-starring Dakota Johnson, Saoirse Ronan and Josh O’Connor.
