Jessie Buckley took the 2026 awards season by storm, winning the 2026 Oscar for Best Actress for her role in Hamnet.
Buckley, 36, won the honor for her highly emotional role as Agnes Shakespeare, the wife and widowed mother of legendary playwright William Shakespeare (played by Paul Mescal, who infamously missed out on Best Actor) in Chloé Zhao’s epic period drama.
She previously won the Broadcast Film Critics Circle Award, Golden Globe Award, SAG Actor Award, and BAFTA Award for this role, but missed out on the New York Film Critics Circle Award, which went to Rose Byrne for “If I Had Legs, I’d Kick.”
Despite this, Buckley continued to receive strong Oscar support throughout the 2026 awards season.
Buckley faced a formidable list of competitors at Sunday’s ceremony in Los Angeles, the entertainment industry’s crown jewel of awards venues.
Rose Byrne for “If I Had Legs,” Renate Reinsve for “Sentimental Value,” Emma Stone for “Bugonia,” and Kate Hudson for “Song San Bleu” were nominated for Best Actress along with Buckley.
The mother-of-one, who discovered she was expecting her first child with husband Freddie after filming Hamnet, spoke about what this intense role taught her about motherhood.
“What this story gave me, and what led me to the next chapter of my life as a mother, was kindness,” she said earlier this month, according to NPR.
“A mother’s tenderness is fierce. Loving and being born are no joke. Being born is no joke,” she continued.
“And the moment something comes into the world, you’re always on the precipice of life and death. That’s our path. … I wanted to be a mother, so that outweighed the idea of being scared.”
He also explained how the story, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s 2020 novel, helped his character stand out from the shadow of William Shakespeare.
“What Maggie O’Farrell did so beautifully was to bring in these people and give them a place alongside this great figure, not only Agnes and Shakespeare’s wife, but also their son Hamnet.[And]give them a panoramic view of what it is to be a woman,” she said.
Buckley confessed that he drew the scenes of unimaginable sadness over the death of his character’s 11-year-old son Hamnet from his “imagination.” These scenes definitely had a huge impact on her victory.
“The death of a child is unfathomable,” she explained. “We don’t know where it begins or ends. We tried to tap into that imaginary truth as much as we could in our story, out of genuine respect, but there’s no way to define that kind of grief.”
She added: “I’m sure it’s different for a lot of people. All I had in that moment was my imagination, but my relationship with this little boy in front of me and what came out of that.”
