Feature Image Credit: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images © 2026 Getty Images
Best Actress Academy Award winner Jessie Buckley is a triple threat on stage and screen. She excels at emotionally layered, often unconventional roles in which she either anchors a surreal narrative or evolves a captivating ensemble.
With a number of hard-hitting performances under her belt, it isn’t hard to find a list of films to represent her cinematic presence and intensity.
10. Fingernails (2023)
In this understated science fiction romance, Jessie Buckley plays Anna, a woman working at an institute that tests whether couples are truly in love through a groundbreaking, yet controversial, scientific method. Buckley brings quiet introspection to the role, making the otherwise sci-fi story more believable.
The film and performances avoid the melodrama that could easily be played into, considering the central theme of love and relationships, instead opting to focus on a naturalistic approach to ground the film in realism.
9. Beast (2017)
In one of Jessie Buckley’s earliest roles, she plays Mol, a young woman living in a suffocating environment who becomes involved with a man suspected of violent crimes. The film’s tension is driven largely by Buckley’s dynamic with her co-star, a relationship charged with both attraction and unease.
Physically and emotionally, Buckley commits fully to the role. You feel that every gesture, every reaction, is rooted in the character’s history.
8. Men (2022)
An unsettling and surreal exploration of grief, trauma, and most importantly, gender dynamics, Jessie Buckley plays Harper, a woman retreating to the countryside after her husband’s gruesome death. Buckley delivers a deeply internalised portrayal, capturing Harper’s vulnerability and resilience with remarkable precision and intensity.
Her ability to convey fear and confusion is only overtaken by her capacity to portray determination without excessive dialogue. She becomes the audience’s anchor, guiding us through the film’s increasingly abstract themes. The physicality of Buckley’s performance is also notable, with her effectively communicating Harper’s emotional state as easily as she would with dialogue.
7. Wicked Little Letters (2023)
Starring alongside Olivia Coleman, Jessie Buckley plays Rose, a foul-mouthed, free-spirited woman at the centre of a scandal involving obscene anonymous letters and her small town. Unlike her other roles, this one allows Buckley to explore comedy while still embracing a chaotic and emotional character.
Beneath Rose’s brash exterior lies a sense of vulnerability and a refusal to accept societal judgment, which Buckley conveys exceptionally through her timing and physicality. Her chemistry with Coleman is the highlight of the film and creates a dynamic that drives a lot of the story’s humour and tension.
6. The Bride! (2026)
This reimagining of the classic movie The Bride of Frankenstein showcases Jessie Buckley’s ability to reinvent a familiar archetype with modern nuance. She brings a striking humanity to a character traditionally defined more by image than anything else.
Rather than portraying the Bride as a silent or purely symbolic figure, Buckley infuses her with curiosity and confusion, fostering a growing sense of autonomy. There’s a physicality to her performance, with searching eyes and fragmented expressions, and if there is one thing Buckley excels at, it’s communicating thought and emotion through her expressions.
5. Wild Rose (2018)
A breakout role for Jessie Buckley, Wild Rose sees her playing Rose-Lynn Harlan, an aspiring Scottish singer with dreams of making it big in Nashville. Buckley fully inhabits the character, capturing Rose-Lynn’s ambition, flaws, and resilience as she struggles to juggle caring for her children while pursuing her dreams.
The musical performances add another incredible layer to the character’s creation and allow the viewer to connect with Buckley on a deeply emotional level. She doesn’t shy away from Rose-Lynn’s flaws, and the energy she brings to the role is passionate, with a sense of urgency in every scene.
4. The Lost Daughter (2021)
Written and directed by Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jessie Buckley plays the younger version of Olivia Coleman’s character, Leda. Both actors received critical acclaim for their performances and were nominated for Academy Awards for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress.
Leda is a character struggling with the demands of motherhood and personal identity. Buckley delivers a haunting performance and captures Leda’s internal conflict with incredible subtlety. Allowing the audience to see both her vulnerability and her detachment. A seamless connection is created between Buckley and Coleman, complementing each other within the two timelines.
3. Women Talking (2022)
Directed by Sarah Polley, Women Talking centres on two days in the lives of a group of Mennonite women who must decide their futures after it is revealed that men in their community have been drugging and raping them for years. Starring alongside powerhouses Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Judith Ivey, and Frances McDormand, Buckley plays one of the more conflicted and emotionally volatile characters in the group.
Shaped by fear, anger, and oppression, Buckley’s performance is intense and deeply affecting. While her character often reacts in ways hard to understand at first, she ensures that the reactions feel authentic. Buckley captures the complexity in her role as a woman grappling with deeply ingrained beliefs and painful experiences.
2. I’m Thinking of Ending Things (2020)
Directed by Charlie Kaufman, I’m Thinking of Ending Things is a complex, surreal film that feels more like an experience than a movie. It relies heavily on Jessie Buckley’s performance as a young woman whose reality begins to unravel during a visit to her boyfriend’s family home. Buckley navigates the film’s shifting narrative with precision and emotional depth, anchoring the story and providing the viewer with a sense of continuity. Even as the plot becomes increasingly abstract.
Buckley captures a vast range of emotions, from curiosity and discomfort to harrowing existential dread. She’s controlled with her performance and delivers the often dense, philosophical dialogue with an accessibly natural, and engaging ease. Buckley adapts seamlessly to the film’s shifting tone and its blend of realism and surrealism, without missing a beat.
1. Hamnet (2025)
Jessie Buckley’s performance as Agnes Hathaway in Hamnet was so emotionally raw and thought-provoking that it won her the coveted Best Actress Oscar at the 2026 Academy Awards. Portraying the wife of William Shakespeare and mother of his children, Buckley captures the deep rawness of grief and devastation at the loss of their son, Hamnet.
Buckley brings a strong sense of individuality to the role of Agnes. She is not merely defined by her husband but a fully recognised being with her own instincts and moral compass. She is not backseat to her husband but the driving force of her family.
She allows Agnes’ grief to ripple through her body, combining both explosive agony and rage with stillness and silence. Buckley creates a primal devastation in Agnes that is nothing short of authentic and lived-in. She transforms this pain into something almost tangible for the audience by showing the profound sense of loss without ever overstating it.