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Jessie Buckley has won Best Actress at the 98th Academy Awards for her role as Agnes in Chloé Zhao's Hamnet.
"We all come from a lineage of women who continue to create against all odds," Buckley told the crowd in her acceptance speech, adding that it was Mother's Day in the UK. Buckley also won Best Actress in a Drama at the 2026 Golden Globes. This is her second Oscar nomination and first win, having been nominated back in 2021 for Best Supporting Actress for Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Lost Daughter.
Directed by Chloé Zhao, the historical drama follows the life of William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) and his wife Agnes Hathaway (Buckley) as they grieve the death of their only son Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe), who passed away at 11 years old from the bubonic plague. Zhao co-wrote the screenplay with Maggie O'Farrell, who wrote the novel of the same name. As the names Hamlet and Hamnet are considered to be interchangeable, scholars have come to conclude that the infamous play Hamlet was indeed inspired by the loss of Shakespeare's son.
The film was nominated for a total of eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director for Zhao, but walked away with only one. The cast also includes Emily Watson, Joe Alwyn, Justine Mitchelle, David Willmot, and Noah Jupe.
“There’s no way that Shakespeare could write Lady Macbeth without knowing a woman who is as deeply complex as somebody like Agnes. The tenderness, the ferocious tenderness of what it is to be a woman," Bucklet told the LA Times of the role.
For more on this year's Academy Awards, check out our Oscars 2026 live blog.
