A landmark moment for Ireland on the world stage
There’s one actor that has been on the lips of every presenter during the 2026 Awards Season, and that’s Ireland’s very own Jessie Buckley. The 36 year old Kerry-born actress has made an impressive sweep, winning a Golden Globe, a BAFTA, an IFTA, the Critics Choice Award, and the SAG-AFTRA award for Leading Actress, all in the past few months, and all for her stellar performance in Hamnet. Buckley plays Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare, as she navigates motherhood and the terrible loss of her only son, and given her accolades, it goes without saying she plays this role with intensity, with truth, and with absolute dedication to the part.
Arguably the biggest award, the one everyone was increasingly wondering if she’d win, was the Oscar for Best Actress. And, she’s only gone and done it, which on its own, is no mean feat, but feels like a particular win for Ireland, as she is the first Irish woman to win in the Best Actress category.
Who is Jessie Buckley?
Jessie Buckley was born in Killarney, County Cork in 1989, the eldest of five children. She grew up doing performing in school musicals, singing, dancing, and playing multiple instruments which eventually landed her a High Achiever Award from the Royal Irish Academy of Music in 2001.
Buckley started her career in the BBC talent contest I’d do Anything in 2008. The show was in search of a star to take the role of Nancy in a West End production of Oliver!. It was hosted by another Irish diaspora member, Graham Norton, and Buckley finished as the runner-up to actress Jodie Prenger.
She then went onto appear in shows such as Endeavour, a miniseries of War and Peace, Taboo, before she had her movie debut in the 2017 film Beast.
Buckley’s TV career didn’t end there. She would appear in the critically acclaimed miniseries Chernobyl in 2019 and the fourth season of Fargo in 2020.
In 2021 she was nominated for her first Oscar for her role in The Lost Daughter, alongside Olivia Colman and Paul Mescal. Several starring roles would come for Buckley in the years that followed, before she was offered the role of Agnes Shakespeare in Chloe Zhao’s adaptation of the Maggie O’Farrell novel Hamnet.
Best Actress 2026
The competition was fierce. Buckley went up against Rose Byrne (If I Had Legs I’d Kick You), Emma Stone (Bugonia), Kate Hudson (Song Sung Blue), and Renate Reinsve (Sentimental Value). All impressive actresses in their own right. Stone already has two Oscars, one of which was for Poor Things, which was by the same director as Bugonia. Byrne brings her own difficult side of motherhood to the forefront in If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. It wasn’t going to be easy, but Buckley managed it. It feels like she brings home that little golden statue not just for herself, but for all of Ireland. While we have seen many Oscars over the years, this one feels particularly poignant.
Hamnet, a novel written by Maggie O’Farrell, and directed by Chloe Zhao, has captured the hearts of audiences everywhere. This is in no small part because of Buckley and her incredible performance. It also stars our very own Paul Mescal as none other than William Shakespeare.
Following her win, Jessie Buckley made an impassioned speech and was visibly emotional by the honour. She emphatically thanked her fellow nominees, as well as author Maggie O’Farrell and director Chloé Zhao, as well as her husband and daughter, citing that it was notably Mother’s Day back in the UK where she lives. You can watch the whole speech below.
Ireland and the Oscars
With this recent win under our belt, 2026 has been a stellar year for the Irish at the Oscars. Still, it’s by no means the first time we have won big. In 2024, Cillian Murphy became the first Irish-born person to win the Best Actor award for Oppenheimer. Previously notable diaspora member Daniel Day Lewis won for My Left Foot in 1990. Lewis remains the only actor to have received three Oscars for Best Actor.
2023 was Ireland’s biggest year to date, with a record-breaking 14 nominations. 5 actors received major nominations, down to Martin McDonagh’s Banshees of Inisherin and Aftersun. 2023 did see the short film An Irish Goodbye win for Best Live-Action Short Film. The Quiet Girl, or An Cailin Ciuin, also made Oscars history as the first time an Irish language film made it into the category of Best International Feature Film.
Richard Baneham won in the category of Visual Effects for Avatar: The Way of Water, also in 2023, an award he’d previously taken home in 2010 for the first Avatar film, and Kenneth Brannagh took home the award for Best Original Screenplay for Belfast in 2022.
Other notable diaspora winners include Brenda Fricker, who won Best Supporting Actress for My Left Foot. She was born in Dublin and until Buckley’s win, was the only Irish actress to have won an Academy Award.
Barry Fitzgerald won Best Supporting Actor in 1945 for his role in Going My Way. He was the first Irish person to win an acting Oscar at all. The playwright George Bernard Shaw won in 1939 for Best Original Screenplay for Pygmalion.
And then we come to one of the most incredible stories with regards to the Oscars. Cedric Gibbons. The creator of the statuette and a legacy Oscar winner in his own right.
Cedric Gibbons
Cedric Gibbons went on to win 11 Academy Awards of his own for art direction. To this day, this category record that remains unsurpassed.
Born to an Irish father and American mother in New York in 1890, Gibbons trained at the Art Students League before going to work as a junior architectural draughtsman. He began his film career as an assistant at the Edison Studios. Here he is said to have persuaded colleagues to use 3D sets rather than painted backdrops.
After a stint in the US Navy, Gibbons joined Goldwyn Pictures and moved to Los Angeles. The film production company merged with two other studios to form MGM, where he served as art director from 1924 to 1956. It was a stipulation of his contract that his name be listed on every MGM film released in the States. He amassed almost 1,500 credits during his tenure, but likely only had a hands-on role in a fraction of those titles.
Gibbons oversaw the development of a strongly distinctive visual identity for the Hollywood studio’s pictures, with a focus on glossy luxury and art deco interiors. He once described the role of art director as someone who “makes everyone’s dreams come true”. Inspired by the designs of Le Corbusier and the German Bauhaus architects, he crafted fantasy landscapes that set a new standard in cinema production.
However, he also had a reputation for perfectionism, sometimes clashing with filmmakers who wanted to assume control of set design. The director Vincente Minnelli called his art department “a medieval fiefdom, its overlord accustomed to doing things in a certain way”.
A Legacy of Oscars
He received his first Oscar for The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), a part-talkie based on the life of Peruvian entertainer Micaela Villegas. Other films that won him awards include Pride and Prejudice (1940), An American in Paris (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956). The Academy also gave him an honorary Oscar for “consistent excellence” in production design in 1950.
His sole directing credit was Tarzan and His Mate (1934), starring Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan. The film was widely commended for its aesthetic qualities, with Variety magazine calling it “an extraordinarily beautiful photographic specimen”.
One of 36 founding members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Gibbons made Oscar history for his design of a trophy in the form of a sword-carrying knight. American sculptor George Stanley was commissioned to make the statuette, which was reputedly modelled on Emilio Fernández, a young Mexican actor. The first batch of awards were handed out at the inaugural Oscar ceremony in 1929.
Gibbons had a highly-publicised first marriage to Hollywood star Dolores del Río, who he met at a party held by newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. He designed a state-of-the-art new home for them in Santa Monica, which some have compared to MGM’s opulent white sets. His second wife was actor Hazel Brooks, with whom he stayed until his death in 1960.
The Cedric Gibbons story can be found within our ‘Creating and Designing’ Gallery. Book tickets to EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, and discover the many ways the diaspora have influenced the world.
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