NEARLY two decades ago, a depressed and directionless teenager applied to the prestigious Guildford School of Acting.
She flew to London from her home in Ireland, with dreams of stardom, only to be rejected.
Many would have given up and gone back home with their tail between their legs, but not Jessie Buckley.
Instead, she decided to attend an open audition for a BBC talent show called I’d Do Anything, taking place that weekend.
The show followed Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s search for a rising star to play Nancy in a new West End production of Oliver!.
To her surprise, Jessie beat thousands of hopefuls to be one of 12 women competing for the coveted role, but she was eventually pipped to the post by Jodie Prenger.
Bold decisions
Jessie was offered the role of Jodie’s understudy, but turned it down, choosing instead to take a lesser role in a small production of Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music – earning £300 a week for her efforts and joking she felt “f**king rich”, despite having to walk home from the theatre after work, as she couldn’t afford the Tube fare.
These bold decisions paid off, and now the 36-year-old actress is definitely having the last laugh.
While her I’d Do Anything rival Jodie is currently playing Glenda Shuttleworth in ITV’s Coronation Street, Jessie’s career is set to go stratospheric if she takes home the Best Actress Oscar next weekend for her heartbreaking performance as Agnes in Chloé Zhao’s Hamnet – an award she is so hotly tipped to win, it feels likes a given.
Last month, she walked away with the BAFTA for Leading Actress, which will join her growing collection of more than 70 gongs, including Golden Globe and Critics’ Choice awards.
There’s no doubt she is now the toast of Hollywood, with A-listers falling over themselves to sing her praises.
Eddie Redmayne, who starred alongside her in West End show Cabaret said: “Every actor that I know admires her so hugely. She calls bulls**t. She doesn’t suffer fools. She adores a negroni, or a martini, depending on the establishment. She’s just one of my favourite human beings in the world.”
But it seems like stardom, plaudits and praise will not go to her head, thanks to her humble beginnings.
Born in Killarney, County Kerry, and educated at a girls’ convent school, she is the eldest of five children.
Jessie’s love of the arts grew from her mother, Marina, an opera singer, vocal coach and harpist, while her father, Tim, is a musician, historian and poet, who also managed a bar.
‘An ordinary girl with a beautiful gift’
Her proud dad previously said: “She’s an ordinary girl with a beautiful gift. It’s her dream to get up there and share that gift.”
People in their local area used to describe the Buckleys as “the Von Trapp family from The Sound Of Music”, and those who know Jessie paint a picture of a dedicated young singer and musician, who spent her free time hiking in the countryside and swimming.
“She’s always been wonderful, a hard worker and very focused,” says her aunt Carol, who’s married to Jessie’s uncle Seán.
“She had drive, ambition and tenacity to keep going at it. She had dipped her toes into so many waters, from musicals to RADA, and was always growing and developing.”
Jessie’s first taste of the thespian world was at Ursuline Secondary School in Thurles, County Tipperary, which she attended from the age of 11.
There, she secured leading roles in school productions of West Side Story, Chess and Children Of Eden. Mary Butler, a former principal at the school, who taught the actress and directed plays there, said that Jessie had something special.
“Hundreds of kids go through the school and have been on stage over the years, but she had that X factor,” Mary told RTÉ Radio 1. “She had a wonderful ability to create character. She took it very seriously and gave it 110%.
“She has a beautiful voice, too – you’d listen to her for ever. But boy, did she work hard at her craft. Everything she does, she does with huge enthusiasm.”
Despite her obvious musical and acting talent, Jessie did not excel academically, and later said she felt depressed in her final years at school.
Her low mood continued while competing on I’d Do Anything.
Despite winning rave reviews from head judge Lord Andrew Lloyd-Webber, who regarded her as a “phenomenal, generational talent” and famously called her rendition of The Man That Got Away “the greatest performance I’ve ever heard from someone her age”, she struggled with the process.
In an interview with Vogue in January, Jessie described the humiliation of being publicly admonished on the talent show as “brutalising”.
“I was depressed and I. . . just wasn’t well,” she says. “There was a lot that was really messed-up.”
She’s extremely talented, but she’s also very humble.
Director Kristoffer Nyholm
It would have been easy for the young Jessie to have quit showbiz at that point, and it’s testament to her strength of character that she didn’t.
Instead, after her role in A Little Night Music, she enrolled in a three-year course at RADA in 2010 to have the student experience and “go to the pub and have a flirt”. As money was tight, she worked as a jazz singer in Mayfair club Annabel’s, and as a shop assistant to pay the bills.
But RADA had strict regulations prohibiting students from performing, which led to a temporary suspension. She later admitted the suspension made her so anxious that she considered dropping out until her “amazing” tutor, John Beschizza, warned her: “If you leave, they’ve won”.
Reflecting on his words, Jessie said: “Sometimes, all you need is for one person to say: ‘I see you.’”
The one person who changed everything…
Another twist of fate saved the day in the form of mentor Tony Bernstein, who after hearing her sing one night, offered to be her benefactor and fund her by paying for her rent, groceries and RADA tuition.
He had no connection to the entertainment industry, but loved musicals and just believed in her talent. Jessie described his involvement as “life-changing”.
She spoke of his kindness on RTÉ’s The Late Late Show in 2019. “I was on 300 quid a week – you can’t even get the Tube on that over in London,” she said.
“And this amazing man, he basically came to see me in A Little Night Music. He got in touch and he has nothing to do with the industry. I think he’d been in The Sound Of Music when he was really young, and he just had a love for theatre, and his name’s Tony Bernstein.”
Jessie graduated from RADA in January 2013 and signed up for a summer season at Shakespeare’s Globe theatre. Roles beside esteemed actors including Jude Law in the West End production of Henry V and in the Kenneth Branagh Theatre Company’s production of The Winter’s Tale, started to get her noticed by those in the industry.
‘Refreshingly blunt’
In 2016, she secured her breakout TV role in BBC drama War & Peace, playing Princess Marya. She began dating co-star James Norton, but they split in the summer of 2017.
Speaking about their break-up the following year, Jessie was refreshingly blunt: “It was acrimonious, but it’s a tough job to have a relationship, and he is a great man and we are great friends. That’s it.”
That year, she starred alongside Tom Hardy in the BBC series Taboo.
Kristoffer Nyholm, who directed four episodes of the show, says he saw Jessie’s potential from the start.
“I felt early on that she was a big star in the making,” he says, explaining that he had first worked with her on an episode of the TV series Endeavour in 2014. He noted how, unlike other actors, she would take time to herself before shooting a scene.
“When Jessie walks on to the set, we don’t need to talk about content or the scene,” he says.
“She instinctively knows how to inhabit a role. She was a fan of Tom’s work and he immediately admired her performance. She came across as hugely confident, and extremely focused. She brings a great energy to the set. There’s a feeling that what we’re doing right now is greater than just this moment. She’s reflective, clever and absolutely charismatic,” he adds.
“She’s extremely talented, but she’s also very humble. She treats everyone she meets in exactly the same manner. There’s something very unique about her,” he says. “I feel that she might sway on occasion, but she will never bend. She has too much integrity.”
Second time lucky for an Oscar win?
This year is not the first time Jessie has been up for an Oscar – she was nominated for Best Supporting Actress for her role in Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter in 2022. She’s never lost her love of music, either.
That same year, she recorded a Mercury-Prize-nominated album with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler.
Hamnet seems to be something special, though. She and co-star Paul Mescal have shared their mutual respect for each other, with the Normal People star describing her as “a red-wine actor” who he’d work with “until the cows came home”.
Despite the fanfare around her work, Jessie prefers to be at home with her husband Freddie Sorensen, 47, and their daughter who was born last year, in their 16th-century house in Norfolk.
After meeting on a blind date set up by music executive Marc Robinson five years ago, Jessie and Freddie married in 2023 in front of 40 guests in a low-key wedding at their home.
Freddie, a mental health worker, has stayed out of the limelight because of his job. Jessie describes him as “extraordinary”, joking his anonymity means he’s been “having a ball eating canapés” at promo events.
The ‘best role’ of her life
It was only a few days after filming for Hamnet wrapped in September 2024 when she found out she was pregnant.
Her first time out of the house with her daughter was at a press screening of the film, which she referenced in her emotional BAFTA acceptance speech.
“I’d like to share this with my daughter who has been with me since she was six weeks old on the road with this. It’s the best role of my life being your mum,” she said.
Friends say she’s never been happier.
“Motherhood suits her. She’s positively glowing right now,” says one. “She’s very content in her relationship, too. It feels like everything’s come together for her in the most beautiful way both in her career and her private life. All she needs now is the Oscar. . .”
Whether she wins or not, you could say she’s already won.
