During the early 2000s, the BBC had a number of talent shows intended to cast an unknown as a lead for an upcoming West End musical revival. One of these shows, I’d Do Anything, sought to cast the next Nancy for a production of Oliver! When Andrew Lloyd Webber tells one young contestant, a curly-haired Irish girl named Jessie Buckley, that she could be Nancy, she almost dissolves into tears on the spot.
Jessie Buckley did not get to play Nancy. But even if she had, her eventual career would have turned it into a mere footnote. Theater productions turned into dramas on the BBC, which turned into plum movie roles and critical acclaim. She was recently nominated for her first Academy Award, and it will almost certainly not be her last. With leading roles in much-anticipated movies like Alex Garland’s Men and Sarah Polley’s Women Talking, Buckley is primed for the kind of breakout year Florence Pugh enjoyed in 2019.
With that in mind, it’s worth charting the roles that led to the stratospheric rise of Jessie Buckley, showing off her poise, gutsiness, and versatility.
Marya Bolkonskaya in War & Peace (2016)
In the novel War & Peace, Leo Tolstoy describes Princess Marya Bolkonskaya as an exceptionally plain woman whose countenance is “transfigured by beautiful eyes.” Although Jessie Buckley is by no means plain, she was an excellent fit for Marya in the BBC’s miniseries adaptation, precisely because of those eyes. She conveys so much through them: the devotion she feels towards her ailing father (Jim Broadbent), the pain his emotional abuse causes her, and the love she feels for Nikolai Rostov (Jack Lowden.) The moment she fixes her gentle gaze on Nikolai, the audience is already hoping for them to find happiness with each other — and Buckley’s soulful eyes make it that much sweeter when they do.
Moll Huntford in Beast (2017)
Buckley’s first feature-length starring role was in Beast, an eerie, nasty psychological thriller about a woman who falls in love with a possible serial killer. As Moll, a lonely rich girl with a manipulative, controlling mother, Buckley is utterly sympathetic at first: she’s tense and frightened around her mother, her body language and voice calibrated to make her seem as small and meek as possible. It’s easy to understand why she might gravitate toward Pascal (Johnny Flynn), even as his bad-boy charm turns into bad-man danger. But it turns out that Moll might not be so harmless herself, and that’s where Buckley really gets to shine. Beast demands a rewatch for Buckley alone: then, one can appreciate her intelligent performance, always hinting at Moll’s hidden depths while hiding just enough to keep it a harrowing surprise.
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Rose-Lynn Harlan in Wild Rose (2018)
Wild Rose could have been as forgettable as any number of post-Billy Elliot British movies about unlikely dreamers. It centers on Rose-Lynn Harlan, a headstrong ex-convict from Glasgow who dreams of becoming a country star along the lines of Dolly Parton or Wynonna Judd. There are the typical obstacles — hard luck, disapproving parents, etc. — but a predictable plot isn’t a problem if it’s executed well, and Wild Rose pulls it off. Buckley is assisted by solid supporting performances from Julie Walters and Sophie Okenedo, but in the end the movie belongs to her. She’s scrappy, sensitive, and often quite funny, name-dropping Johnny Cash and calling someone a “bawbag” in the same sentence. She’s never less than compelling as an actress here, and as a singer she might be even better: her sweet and soulful country croon would sound right at home on a honky-tonk jukebox.
Lyudmilla Ignatenko in Chernobyl (2019)
Chernobyl gave many human faces to the infamous nuclear disaster, and Lyudmilla Ignatenko might be the most tragic. The loving, pregnant wife of a firefighter who’s one of the first responders, Lyudmilla is awake at the time of the explosion, and bears witness to the fallout: she watches the radiation poisoning slowly melt her husband, and she gives birth to a daughter who survives only four hours. Chernobyl uses infernal, apocalyptic imagery to bring the disaster to life; therefore, Buckley plays Lyudmilla as a woman thrust into what is almost literally Hell. Her behavior is brave, selfish, loving and stupid, but it never once feels false or contrived: Buckley makes Lyudmilla’s near-suicidal actions feel like the natural response to this environment of panic and terror. Her desperation to find and comfort her husband is utterly human, and Buckley lends it heartbreaking pathos; it’s also the worst possible thing she could have done, and therein lies the tragedy of Chernobyl.
Oraetta Mayflower in Fargo (2020)
The fourth season of Fargo may not have been as strong as the previous three, but it did provide one of the series’ most indelible characters. Oraetta Mayflower is a serial killer nurse who unwittingly starts a gang war when she poisons a powerful figure in the criminal underworld. Fitting with Fargo’s fatalistic tone, Oraetta is a force majeure, a random accident flung out of space that upsets a delicate balance and causes chaos. That might be why Buckley’s performance as Oraetta is so uncanny; her stiff posture and odd, precise way of speaking suggests someone (or something) truly other. As this is Fargo, there are plenty of dark laughs to be had, such as when she calls for the police while said police are arresting her. But Buckley’s glassy eyes and tight-lipped grin bring a genuine creepiness to her character, a sense that she’s looking at the world through a cracked telescope.
Young Woman in I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
As the female lead in Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things, Jessie Buckley plays a woman named Lucy, or Lucia, or Louisa, or Ames. She’s traveling with her boyfriend, Jake (Jesse Plemons), to meet his parents for dinner at their farmhouse, even though she’s thinking of breaking up with him. There, she sees them growing older and younger before her eyes; she sees strange scratch marks on a door that are never explained; she discovers inexplicable janitor outfits. On the ride back, she becomes momentarily possessed by Pauline Kael. At no point does she seem like an entirely real person; this is very much the point. Buckley’s job is to balance all of this surrealism, all of these jarring shifts in tone and situation, all of these changing motivations — all while being a compelling presence the audience can root for. Not only does she succeed, she becomes a fascinating mystery in her own right.
Jo Robinson in Misbehaviour (2020)
Based on the feminist protests against the 1970 Miss World pageant in London, Misbehaviour is a fitfully funny, largely forgettable crowd-pleaser that makes the obvious choice at every turn. (To give the reader an idea of how thuddingly on-the-nose it gets, there’s a “You Don’t Own Me” needle drop in the trailer.) But while it won’t surprise anyone who’s seen Pride (or any number of other feel-good British dramedies), the performances are uniformly solid, particularly Buckley’s. As Jo Robinson, the intense, radical ally of Sally Alexander (Keira Knightley), Buckley bristles with righteous indignation, bringing fire and even joy to her portrayal of an activist who’s tired of compromising. Even when she’s playing the typical story beats, like a requisite third-act falling-out with Sally, she’s in sharp form. “If you don’t fight, you deserve the world you fucking get,” Jo warns Sally; it seems as though Buckley applies that same fighting spirit to conventional scripts.
Juliet in Romeo and Juliet (2021)
Buckley was no stranger to Shakespeare before Romeo and Juliet; she played Miranda in The Tempest and Perdita in The Winter’s Tale. But her star had already thoroughly risen by the time she played Juliet for a filmed National Theatre production, and it shows though her acting. There’s a confidence to her every choice, even when her character might be unsure; this shows in the balcony scene, which is given a different reading from most iterations. Rather than shirt-rending passion, the approach is more subtle: Buckley’s Juliet and Josh O’Connor’s Romeo speak in hushed, nervous stage-whispers, feeling very much like two awkward, clumsy teenagers. And yet, when Juliet urges Romeo to “pronounce [his love] faithfully,” she cups Romeo’s face, lovingly but firmly; she isn’t being coy or spurring him on, she genuinely needs to hear his honest declaration of love. Buckley’s Juliet doesn’t feel like a legend — she just feels like a teenager named Juliet who fell in love.
Young Leda Caruso in The Lost Daughter(2021)
What’s more daunting than performing opposite an actress as acclaimed as Olivia Colman? How about playing a younger version of Colman’s character, therefore guaranteeing that the two performances will be compared to each other? That was the situation Jessie Buckley entered when she signed onto Maggie Gyllenhaal’s The Lost Daughter, a chilly psychological drama based on a novel by Elena Ferrante. As the younger version of Colman’s Leda Caruso, Buckley had to bring across the agonies of motherhood in order to make Leda’s decision to leave her family for a while more understandable. And goodness, she certainly does. Buckley is brilliant as a woman doing everything she can to hold herself together in a pressure-cooker situation, trying to juggle her academic career with whiny children who need help spelling “volcano.” This role earned Buckley her first Oscar nomination; and as burdened as young Leda might be, there is nothing holding Jessie Buckley back.
