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.”

“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.

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. 

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.”

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.