Entertainment
“Hamnet” actress Jessie Buckley on how Shakespeare changed everything for her
She’s been called “the acting world’s best-kept secret.” But Jessie Buckley’s latest role, in the film “Hamnet,” may change that. As Rolling Stone put it, people “will be talking about Jessie Buckley’s performance for years.”
Buckley plays the wife of William Shakespeare (portrayed by fellow Irish actor Paul Mescal). Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, it’s a fictionalized tale about the death of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet. It imagines the tragedy inspired him to write “Hamlet.”
Focus Features
“I just knew I had to go somewhere mentally, emotionally,” Buckley said of her work.
I said, “You have this fire inside you – that’s what we see on film.”
“I don’t know, do you?” she replied.
“I’d say so, in what I’ve seen, you see it!”
“I have fire, but I tell you what ‘Hamnet’ gave me, which I also was looking for, was tenderness. And sometimes it’s just as strong as fire.”
She said when she started shooting the more difficult scenes, like the death of her child, she told her husband she needed to go away for two weeks. So, Buckley came to Hampstead Heath, a vast green space in London, where she’d go swimming each morning. “I just need to be in nature and start my day and wake up that way, and then go to the set and see what came out,” she said.
CBS News 
She says “Hamnet” director Chloé Zhao (an Oscar-winner for “Nomadland”) reminded her cinema is not just escapism. “Our jobs as actors and the storytellers are to touch the most heightened expressions that are too hard to hold on our own,” Buckley said. “I get to incubate the bits of us, myself, the shadow bits.”
“What are the shadow bits of you that came out for this role?” I asked.
“I’m not telling you!” she laughed. “You have to watch it and make up your own mind.”
“The sacred flame of star quality”
Her breakthrough role was playing a single mom just out of prison in 2018’s “Wild Rose.” Then, in 2022, Buckley got an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress in “The Lost Daughter.” Her other credits included “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” “Beast” and “Women Talking,” and the TV series “Fargo.”
She said, “I never in a million years thought I’d make a film.”
Because? “I didn’t have a TV ’til I was 15,” she said. “And it was exotic, like, it was in Hollywood. It wasn’t in Kerry.”
In rugged County Kerry, in Ireland’s southeast, Buckley grew up in an artistic family, playing harp, clarinet and piano. She sang and did school productions. But it was the British talent show, “I’d Do Anything,” that put her on a bigger stage – and in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber. He praised her, saying, “Jessie has the sacred flame of star quality.”
She lost that competition, but quickly landed theater roles. Her first Shakespeare performance was near the spot in London where Shakespeare’s early plays were first performed, at the original Rose Playhouse, built in 1587.
robbie jack/Corbis via Getty Images 
Shakespeare changed everything for her: “I think before, I felt like music was the only way to contain what was kind of wanting to come out, and then Shakespeare’s words and his worlds were so titanic that it just made me realize how powerful words could be,” she said.
Of acting opposite Mescal in “Hamnet,” Buckley said, “I absolutely adore that man. And from our very first chemistry read …”
“Chemistry read is to make sure you have chemistry?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she laughed. “I mean, it would be really depressing if I didn’t, wouldn’t it? I’d be like the only woman in the world who failed to find chemistry with Paul Mescal!”
The 35-year-old actor says she also found chemistry with Christian Bale for her next film, in which she plays the bride of Frankenstein’s monster. Directed by Maggie Gyllenhall, it’s genre- and expectation-bending. “It’s punk, it is proper punk,” Buckley said. “I remember when I read it first, it was like being plugged into an electrical socket.”
Warner Brothers 
I said, “Maggie Gyllenhaal referred to you as kind of a wild animal.”
“Hmm. Good,” Buckley said.
“Do you think there’s a truth to that?”
“I have a lot of life in me!”
That life and vitality that we now see on film is the journey that brought Buckley to London as a teenager. At the time, she says, she was in a dark place. “I had depression and I wasn’t very well,” she said. “And I wanted a lot from life. I was really hungry for it. And I felt like there was no place for that. And I think that’s when it imploded in on me, and when I got sick and lost myself, you know?”
“How did your deal with it?”
“I got help,” she replied. “I got therapy. Singing. I mean, I honestly think it’s kind of saved me. Something wasn’t alive then, let’s just say, like it is now.”
To watch a trailer for “Hamnet” click on the video player below.
WEB EXCLUSIVE: Watch an extended interview with Jessie Buckley (Video)
For more info:
- “Hamnet” (from Focus Features) opens in theaters Dec. 12
- “The Bride!” (from Warner Brothers) opens in theaters March 2026
Story produced by Mikaela Bufano. Editor: Carol Ross.
Duchess Sophie gave a much-needed break to the well-wishers of the monarchy with a light-hearted dance with inspiring women.
Prince Edward’s wife performed a number of meaningful engagements during her crucial visit to Somalia at the request of the Foreign and Development Office.
The purpose of her trip was “to continue her work supporting survivors of conflict-related sexual violence (CRSV) in the region,” Buckingham Palace shared.
Among many special moments Sophie shared with people in Somalia, her joyful dance delighted viewers in times of crisis.
The Duchess of Edinburgh joined talented women of the Kazuri Beads workshop in Nairobi to celebrate their craftsmanship and community spirit.
Sophie, renowned for her dedication to supporting women worldwide, showcased her dance moves, earning admiration for making “royalty look easy when it’s not.”
In the comments section, one fan praised King Charles’ secret weapon, calling her “a hero.”
“That’s a true Royal right there. What a wonderful woman bringing this awareness to people’s consciousness,” another fan penned.
Cruz Beckham shared behind-the-scenes insights from his UK tour on Wednesday.
It marked a milestone for Cruz, who has been building up to his sold out tour following the release of his single, For Your Love.
Ahead of his band’s first show in Birmingham, the singer revealed a sweet tribute to his mum and the Spice Girls in a series of photos shared to his Instagram Story.
Showing off the stage monitors, Cruz had given each of his bandmates a Spice Girls-themed nicknames.
The monikers included, Smokey Spice, Stoney Spice, Coffee Spice and, Hairy Spice.
Cruz looked excited for his big day as the son of David and Victoria shared glimpses of the preparations before taking to the stage.
In one photo, Cruz rocked a leather jacket as he posed with two men who donned ‘Crews Beckham’ T-shirts.
In another he rocked a baseball cap with his band Cruz Beckham and The Breakers emblazoned across the top.
He wrote: ‘See you soon Birmingham.’
Meanwhile, Cruz’s girlfriend, Jackie Apostel, 30 supported him throughout the tour, proudly showing of his tour merchandise – a hoodie with all of his tour dates on the back.
The couple have been together since 2024, after they were first spotted together at Glastonbury.
Earlier this month, Cruz released the music video for his new single For Your Love.
Lauren Chapin, the child actress best known for playing the youngest daughter on the beloved 1950s American sitcom Father Knows Best, died at the age of 80.
She passed away on Tuesday, 24th February 2026, in a hospital in Miami, Florida, from cancer. Her death was confirmed by her daughter, Summer Chapin.bout
Know more about Lauren Chapin
To millions of television viewers, Chapin was Kathy Anderson, a giggly, ribbon-haired tomboy affectionately nicknamed “Kitten” by her on-screen father, Jim Anderson, played by Robert Young.
It was a role she first stepped into at just nine years old, after auditioning in the summer of 1954 and winning the part over hundreds of other girls, partly, she later recalled, because of her resemblance to one of Young’s real-life daughters.
She went on to appear in 196 of the show’s 203 episodes across its six-year run, earning five Junior Emmy Awards for Best Child Actress along the way.
The show itself became a cultural touchstone of its era, climbing steadily into the Nielsen top ten and switching networks twice, from CBS to NBC, and back to CBS again, as its popularity grew.
But behind the wholesome family scenes and the cheerful grade-school antics of little Kitten, Chapin’s real life was a world away from the Anderson household.
As she laid bare in her 1989 autobiography, Father Does Know Best: The Lauren Chapin Story, she was raised by an abusive father and an alcoholic mother who had pushed all three of her children into acting to fulfil her own unfulfilled ambitions.
Lauren was just four years old, she wrote, when the abuse began.
When Father Knows Best ended in 1960, Chapin was fourteen. She later described feeling like a has-been before she’d even reached adulthood.
The years that followed were, by her own account, defined by heroin addiction, work as a call girl, a prison sentence for check forgery, and multiple stints in psychiatric facilities.
She made several suicide attempts by the time she was eighteen, had been married and divorced, and suffered eight miscarriages.
In 1964, she sued her mother over her television earnings, alleging she had been made to sign away all rerun benefits, money she said she never saw.
Her path out of that darkness, she said, came through faith.
Chapin became a born-again Christian and was later licensed and ordained as an evangelical minister. She reportedly raised millions of dollars to support abused children and spent years giving religious testimonials about her experiences.
“I’m not proud of my past, but in a strange way, I’m thankful for it,” she once said. “If Christ can love a person like I was, he can love anyone. To me, that’s the real message of my past.”
In the years that followed, she built a quietly different life.
In the early 1980s she taught natural childbirth and worked for a brokerage firm.
She later owned two beauty pageant enterprises and was also credited with helping to launch the early career of actress Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Chapin was born Lauren Ann Chapin on 23rd May 1945, in Los Angeles. Her two older brothers, Billy and Michael Chapin, were also child actors.
She is survived by her daughter, Summer.
For a generation that grew up with Father Knows Best, Chapin was the little girl who cried melodramatically, burst into rooms uninvited, and looked up at her television father with complete trust.
The distance between that image and the life she actually lived makes her story all the more remarkable, and her survival all the more so.
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