Buckley’s dramatic rise from BBC talent search to the Golden Globes

Hollywood loves a victorious underdog narrative and Jessie Buckley, the actor from Killarney in County Kerry, looks set to come up with the goods at the 83rd Golden Globes tonight.

After her best actress award at the US Critics’ Choice awards last week, UK bookmakers make her the Globes favourite in the same category for her performance in Hamnet. She plays William Shakespeare’s wife in Chloé Zhao’s adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel about the death of the Bard’s beloved son.

Some odds place her at around 1/20, far ahead of closest rivals Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value) and Jennifer Lawrence (Die My Love).

The films expected to dominate the Los Angeles ceremony are Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, which leads the pack with nine nominations, and the genre-bending Sinners. The actors tipped for honours include Timothée Chalamet, for Marty Supreme, and Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent).

O’Farrell was thrilled with Zhao’s casting of Buckley. “She is a dream Agnes, she does an incredible job inhabiting that character," she said.

Buckley, 36, was rejected by the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London before appearing as a teenager on the BBC talent show I’d Do Anything, where she finished runner-up in a search for a Nancy in Oliver! The experience was punishing. “I hope young women are never again brutalised quite like what happened on that show,” she told Vogue.

She trained at Rada and has steadily built her success on stage and screen, earning acclaim for performances in Wild Rose, Tom Harper’s film about a Glasgow country singer, The Lost Daughter, Maggie Gyllenhaal’s adaption of Elena Ferrante’s psychological thriller, and as Sally Bowles opposite Eddie Redmayne in the 2021 West End revival of Cabaret, for which she won an Olivier Award.

In Hamnet, Buckley delivers a challenging performance as Agnes Hathaway. The visceral childbirth scenes and her expressions of grief after losing her only son were praised. Wendy Ide, The Observer’s film critic, called her a “force of nature” in the film. Her father, Tim Buckley, told the Irish Independent last week: “She makes me and the country proud.”

Photograph by JC Olivera/Variety via Getty