Jessie Buckley has officially made a triumphant sweep through the awards season, earning the Best Actress trophy at the 2026 Oscars on Sunday for her role in Hamnet. Buckley triumphantly defeated fellow nominees Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue), Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value), and Emma Stone (Bugonia).
“This is truly something extraordinary,” Buckley said, her emotions spilling over as she took the stage. In her speech, Buckley expressed her gratitude towards the “incredible women” nominated in the category, as well as her loved ones.
Regarding her eight-month-old baby girl, Buckley expressed her love for being a mother and her excitement to “discover life” with her. As Sunday also marked Mother’s Day in the U.K., Buckley dedicated her award to “the beautiful chaos of a mother’s heart.”
Backstage, Buckley continued to discuss how special it was to win the award on U.K.’s Mother’s Day. “As the first Irish woman to win and on Mother’s Day – it feels like some kind of magical alchemy that all these things are colliding on a day like today. My daughter got her first tooth this week, and I woke up with her lying on my chest, snuggling me. It feels like a gift to explore motherhood through this incredible mother that I am and was, and then to become one myself, and then to receive this recognition of the incredible role mothers play in our world on this day is something I will never, ever forget.”
While many of the awards at tonight’s ceremony were more unpredictable, including both actor categories and Best Picture, Buckley’s honor seemed one of the few sure bets. Buckley, who was previously nominated for an Oscar in 2022 for Best Actress in a Supporting Role in The Lost Daughter, had already won a SAG, BAFTA, and Golden Globe for her role in the Chloé Zhao movie about Agnes and William Shakespeare.
Hamnet was nominated in eight total Academy Awards categories, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Adapted Screenplay. The Hollywood Reporter’s review of Hamnet from the Telluride Film Festival reads, “It’s Buckley who really stuns, as she evolves Agnes from the free-spirited girl of the grass to the loving wife and mother to the brittle and grieving woman. She grounds a character who could have seemed too ethereal in raw, naked feeling.”
“I never want to project any idea of what the women I play are meant to be, I just want to go down the river with them and let them have their own voice with it,” Buckley said during THR’s actress roundtable.
