SHE may be tipped for an Oscar with her new film Hamnet, but one thing you will never see Jessie Buckley doing is appearing in a superhero movie.
The Irish actress says she would end up looking like a Smurf if she tried to squeeze into the skin-tight costumes worn by comic-book heroes.
Jessie, 35, joked she could never pull off the look, especially compared to Hollywood star Jennifer Lawrence, who played blue-skinned mutant Mystique in Marvel’s X-Men films.
She said: “I just don’t think I should be in a catsuit. Like when they painted Jennifer Lawrence blue and she looked amazing. I would look like a Smurf.
“It would just be like one of these little stubby Irish blue things.”
Hamnet, which hits cinemas in January, sees Jessie play Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, who is played by Paul Mescal.
It tells the story of the couple’s heartbreak after the death of their 11-year-old son Hamnet, a tragedy some believe inspired Shakespeare’s play Hamlet.
Jessie’s fearless performance has seen her hailed as an Oscars front-runner, but at the New York premiere in November, she said of the speculation: “I’m just trying to be present in the moment.
“I’m really proud to be putting this film out in the world. I mean, to make anything at all is a triumph. The other stuff is extra.”
Forget Marvel though — Jessie’s real superhero duties are currently happening at home.
The actress splits her time between London and Norfolk with husband Freddie, a mental health worker, whose surname she has not revealed.
The couple became parents earlier this year but have not made their child’s name public as yet either.
She said: “I’m also a new mum so most of the time I’m changing a nappy.”
She met Freddie, from Islington, North London, after being set up on a blind date.
Jessie previously dated War & Peace co-star James Norton for two years until 2017.
She described their break- up as “acrimonious” and put it down partly to the fact they were both actors.
They kept their split secret for several months and he was then seen kissing another co-star, Imogen Poots, who he was briefly engaged to.
She’s like a Trojan farter and a burper
Jessie on Olivia Colman
Talking of her husband, Jessie told the Table Manners With Jessie And Lennie Ware podcast: “He’s English. I moved to London when I was 17 and anytime I brought an English boyfriend back to Ireland, my granny would call him Seamus, whatever his name was.
“It was just, ‘Seamus. How are you Seamus?’.”
Jessie burst into the spotlight aged 18 when she came second on BBC talent show I’d Do Anything.
She then forged a career in theatre and indie films, making her movie debut in acclaimed thriller Beast in 2017.
The following year she starred as a single mum fresh out of prison in Wild Rose.
When filming 2021’s The Lost Daughter she became good friends with co-star Olivia Colman.
She said: “She’s great, such a great human. We’ve become good friends and it just feels so fun. And she is the naughtiest person. You don’t know what she’s going to do. She might fart or burp in the middle of a scene.
“She’s like a Trojan farter and a burper.”
But over the years, Jessie’s relentless workload has often pushed her to breaking point.
A gruelling six-month West End run in Cabaret alongside Eddie Redmayne in 2021 left her so stretched she could barely speak outside the theatre.
And it was not the first time Jessie had pushed herself to the brink.
She once said of a time before she found fame: “I had depression and I wasn’t very well and I wanted a lot from life. I was really hungry for it. And I felt like there was no place for that.
‘Cow’s tongue’
“And I think that’s when it imploded in on me, and when I got sick and lost myself. I got help, I got therapy. Singing . . . I honestly think it’s kind of saved me. Something wasn’t alive then, let’s just say, like it is now.”
So when Jessie was filming Hamnet she made sure she took care of herself.
Before some of the most gruelling scenes, she went away for two weeks and swam each morning at Hampstead Heath, North London.
She said: “I just needed to be in nature and start my day and wake up that way, and then go to set.”
Jessie, the oldest of five, describes her childhood as “mayhem, but with loads of love and sometimes terror.”
She and her brother and three sisters would put on shows for guests staying at her parents Marina and Tim’s guesthouse.
I just don’t think I should be in a catsuit. Like when they painted Jennifer Lawrence blue and she looked amazing. I would look like a Smurf
Jessie
Jessie said: “My dad used to own a guesthouse and we lived in the shed at the back.
“We would all be involved, because we’d make the beds and then if there were American tourists, part of our job as kids was to serve the food.
“And then we’d all put Irish dancing dresses on and have to give them Irish dancing performances.
“We were the evening entertainment.”
But she says the food her dad made was sometimes a bit too “exotic” for her.
She told the podcast: “Sometimes when you’re a kid, you just want a tuna sandwich.
“So we get like an aubergine sandwich or something, which in Kerry was quite a bold thing.
“And at one point I started to steal poor Shona Madden’s lunch box, because she did have tuna sandwiches. And things like, there’s this great food market up in Cork, and we come home for Christmas dinner and there’d be a cow’s tongue in the fridge.
“I don’t know if I ate it, but it was kind of like Charlie and Wonka’s . . . anything could happen.”
She has inherited her dad’s kitchen skills and loves to spend time in the countryside cooking for her husband.
Jessie said: “I love cooking. I’m crap at cooking when I’m in London and I love going out to eat when I’m in London, but when I’m at home in Norfolk, I don’t see anybody and I just love cooking.
“It’s our heart home. We were originally going to move to Suffolk. Then friends of ours had moved to Norfolk and bought this old place for like nothing on an auction.
“And then they showed us this house that we live in, which is 1500s and falling down and orange, and it’s a really amazing old house that’s been there forever.”
A far cry from the Marvel universe, but it is exactly the world where Jessie feels most herself.
