Jessie Buckley won the Best Actress Oscar for her role as Agnes in Focus Features' Hamnet at the 98th Academy Awards, capping months of strong predictions for Irish talent including her frontrunner status. The first Irish actor to win in the category, she shared emotional reflections on motherhood backstage on UK Mother's Day.
Jessie Buckley celebrated her Best Actress Oscar win for portraying Agnes in Hamnet at the 98th Academy Awards on Sunday night, fulfilling the high expectations from earlier awards-season buzz that tipped her as a top contender alongside Paul Mescal and other Irish talents. The win coincided with UK Mother's Day, which Buckley called a profound personal and professional milestone as a new mother. Backstage, she described the experience as 'extremely humbling and relatable,' sharing that her daughter's first tooth emerged that week and she woke with her child snuggling on her chest. 'It feels like some kind of crazy alchemy that all of these things are colliding on a day like today... This day is something I will never, ever forget,' she said, tying it to the role's themes of motherhood, tenderness, strength, vulnerability, grief, and love.
Buckley had swept preceding awards including BAFTA, Critics Choice, Golden Globes, and SAG Awards. Reflecting on her career, she recalled her 2022 nomination for The Lost Daughter and noted, 'I think all my roles stay with me... why would [I] ever want to let that go?'
