Hamnet, Chloé Zhao’s film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s bestselling novel about William Shakespeare and his wife, Agnes (or Anne) Hathaway, is a tender meditation on love and grief. Charting the couple’s anguish over the death of their 11-year-old son – said to have inspired the play Hamlet – it has moved audiences to tears and united critics in their praise.
The film’s emotional force is carried by the Irish actor and singer Jessie Buckley, who portrays Hathaway (opposite Paul Mescal’s Shakespeare) with a rawness and intimacy that has already earned her a Critics’ Circle award for best actress, and marked her out as a leading contender for the Golden Globes, Baftas and Oscars. The Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw called her “unselfconsciously beguiling”, while Rolling Stone predicted audiences “will be talking about Jessie Buckley’s performance for years”.
“[Agnes] was the full story of what I understand a woman to be,” Buckley, 36, said recently. “And their capacity as women, and as mothers, and as lovers, and as people who have a language unto their own beside gigantic men of literature like Shakespeare.”
That sense of Agnes as an uncontainable being finds its most devastating expression in one of the film’s key scenes. When Agnes realises Hamnet has died in her arms, Buckley releases a scream so unfiltered it cuts through the film’s careful quiet. Zhao has described the moment as coming from “beyond past, present and future”.
Buckley’s ability to inhabit an extremity of emotions has been honed over years – on stage and screen. Born in Killarney, County Kerry, the eldest of five siblings, she attended an all-girls convent school before studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada) in London.
Her career began in 2008 as a contestant on the BBC talent show I’d Do Anything, where she competed to play Nancy in a West End adaptation of Oliver! (she finished second behind Jodie Prenger, and recently called the experience “brutalising”).
After graduating from Rada in 2013, Buckley’s stage career took off, including landing starring roles in The Tempest at Shakespeare’s Globe and opposite Jude Law in a West End production of Henry V. Her early onscreen appearances were in BBC television series such as War & Peace, Taboo, and The Woman in White.
Her film debut came in the psychological thriller Beast, playing the lead role of Moll, a troubled young woman who falls for a poacher suspected of murders. The film’s director, Michael Pearce, told the Guardian Buckley gave “every ounce of herself” to the role. “Because of that commitment you end up with so many incredible surprises in the performance.
“My initial version of Moll was slightly colder and more restrained, and Jessie instinctively pushed the character somewhere far more alive, like she was a raw nerve who felt everything intensely and was constantly trying to keep that intensity under control.” Pearce’s editor was also moved by her. “The first thing she said was: ‘Where did you find this incredible actor? She’s so emotionally alive on screen.’”
Buckley’s career progressed with starring roles in the TV series Chernobyl and Fargo, and in films including Wild Rose, The Courier and I’m Thinking of Ending Things. She starred as a younger version of Olivia Colman’s character in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s feature directorial debut The Lost Daughter in 2021, a critically acclaimed performance for which she received her first Oscar nomination. Buckley then led Alex Garland’s folk horror film Men the following year, playing a widow who travels to a village and becomes tormented by strange men, all played by Rory Kinnear. Kinnear told the Guardian “everyone that’s worked with [Jessie] knows she will go down as one of the best to ever do it”.
Buckley’s other recent films include an adaptation of Women Talking (2022) and Wicked Little Letters (2023). Meanwhile, on stage, her portrayal of Sally Bowles in a 2021 West End revival of Cabaret won her the Olivier award for best actress in a musical. The following year, she released the album For All Our Days That Tear the Heart with the former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler, which was shortlisted for the Mercury prize.
The Cabaret director, Rebecca Frecknall, recalled the first time they rehearsed the scene that led up to the show’s title number. “Everyone in the room gradually stopped what they were doing and focused on her. I don’t know what she was channelling in that moment but it was one of the most exciting moments I’ve ever experienced in a rehearsal room.” Fracknall said Buckley was “so live all of the time, like she has one less layer of skin than anyone else”.
Ben Whishaw, who starred alongside Buckley in Fargo and Women Talking, said watching her work on set was fascinating. “It was like observing an animal in its natural habitat: obeying some natural instinct she barely understood, very beautiful, but also, if something got in her way, she may bite,” he said.
“There are days when it seems Jessie has written a song, recorded an album, cooked lunch for 12 people and had a baby all before I’ve managed to get out of bed.
“Her performance in Hamnet is now among my favourites of all time – up there with Gena Rowlands, Maria Falconetti and Anna Magnani – people we both love and revere.”
Buckley and her husband, a mental health worker, live in Norfolk and had their first child last year, after playing Agnes gave her a “deep need” to become a mother.
She is up against a slate of acclaimed performers this awards season, including Chase Infiniti (One Battle After Another) and Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value). Whether she triumphs or not, Buckley has said her intention is “to make people feel rather than becoming disembodied, disconnected, disengaged”.
