On January 11, 2026, Jessie Buckley stood beneath the glittering lights of Hollywood, clutching a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama. The award, for her stirring portrayal of Agnes Shakespeare in Hamnet, marked a new high in a career already studded with critical acclaim. Yet, as flashbulbs popped and congratulations poured in, the Irish star’s personal life remained shrouded in an intentional, almost old-fashioned privacy.
Buckley’s win was more than just another trophy for the mantle. According to Variety, it was her very first Golden Globe nomination, capping off a remarkable run that included a Critics Choice Award win just one week prior and a Screen Actors Guild nomination. Onstage, Buckley’s humility shone through as she began her acceptance speech with, “This is not a normal feeling or situation to be in, but thank you, Golden Globes, thank you Focus and everybody who supported this film.” She reserved a special shoutout for Tomasz Sternicki, the film’s key grip, recalling, “I found [Tomasz] one day at the back of his truck, and he was chopping up potatoes and onions and meat…he brought his ginormous cast iron pot over from Poland…and this soup started turning up on set, so it was delicious.”
But while Buckley’s professional triumphs are well documented, her private world is a different story altogether. The actress, who wore a baby blue Dior gown with matching high heels to the 2026 Golden Globes (as reported by ELLE), posed solo on the red carpet. Her husband, known only as Freddie, was conspicuously absent from the paparazzi’s lens. And that’s by design. As Grazia UK revealed, Freddie is a mental health worker who values his anonymity—so much so that even his last name remains a secret to the public. “Anonymity is essential,” British Vogue noted about his career, explaining that his work in mental health would be complicated by public attention.
That’s not to say Freddie is a stranger to the entertainment world. Before his current career, he reportedly worked as a producer on British television staples like The X Factor, Game Of Talents UK, and the Gladiators reboot. Still, he’s more at home behind the scenes than in the limelight. The couple splits their time between a flat in Dalston, London, and a centuries-old home in Norfolk—a property they discovered thanks to friends who renovated it after buying it at auction. “We probably split 50/50 between them at the moment,” Buckley shared on the Table Manners podcast in 2024, adding, “Norfolk is our heart home.”
Freddie, originally from Islington, London, is thought to be about 47—making him roughly a decade older than Buckley, who is now 36. Their romance began on a blind date set up by a mutual friend in the music industry. Their first meeting, a stroll along Regent’s Canal in Hackney, blossomed into a relationship Buckley first hinted at in March 2021. “He’s working in mental health, he’s gone back to university. He is gorgeous,” she said candidly on Table Manners. The pair married quietly in the summer of 2023 at their Norfolk home, keeping the event under wraps. “One of my favourite memories of the day was I wanted a keg of Guinness, and I definitely wanted their cheese toasties at a certain hour,” Buckley recalled with a laugh.
Motherhood soon followed. In April 2025, Buckley surprised fans by appearing pregnant on the CinemaCon red carpet in Las Vegas. Later that year, she and Freddie welcomed a baby girl, though the couple has chosen to keep details about their daughter closely guarded. As Daily Mail reported, Buckley reflected on her journey to motherhood during a December 2025 appearance on the New York Times’ Modern Love podcast. “I think when I was filming Hamnet, I deeply wanted to become a mother myself. And it was such a gift to move through this woman and her motherhood, and her love and her loss before I became a mother myself,” she said. Buckley also spoke about the empowerment she felt in shaping her pregnancy and birth experience, adding, “I think even getting pregnant and throughout my pregnancy, and how I was thinking about what kind of birth I wanted and how I would be autonomous in choosing that as much as I could was very empowering.”
Buckley’s musings on love and loss aren’t just limited to her personal life. In interviews around the release of Hamnet, she described the film’s themes with heartfelt candor. “Grief and love isn’t one color,” she told ELLE. “There’s rage in there. There’s broken pieces of glass. It’s love, it’s everything. Stories help us transcend the things that we don’t know how to let out of ourselves.” Filming the movie’s finale, Buckley admitted, “I had no idea where I was going to go. And being lost was part of it…I remember thinking, ‘Actually, maybe it’s deeply human to be lost. And if I can let them see that, then so be it.’ The humanity is a person who’s trying to find themselves in a moment where they’re totally broken. It’s a mess being a human.”
Directed by Oscar winner Chloé Zhao and adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, Hamnet traces the love story of Agnes and William Shakespeare, their marriage, and the devastating loss of their only son to the plague. The film, which debuted at the Telluride Film Festival in August 2025, earned six Golden Globe nominations, including nods for Best Supporting Actor (Paul Mescal), Best Director (Zhao), Best Screenplay (Zhao and O’Farrell), and Best Original Score (Max Richter). Ultimately, it took home the top prize for Best Motion Picture Drama as well as Buckley’s acting honor.
Buckley’s career trajectory has been nothing short of meteoric. Before Hamnet, she starred in acclaimed films like Women Talking, Wild Rose, and The Lost Daughter—the latter earning her an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress. She was also recognized as one of ELLE’s 2025 Women in Hollywood honorees. Next up, she’s set to appear in the much-anticipated The Bride!
Despite her rising fame, Buckley’s approach to life remains grounded. She joked about her Irish roots and her grandmother’s habit of calling every English boyfriend “Seamus”—“But Freddie stayed Freddie,” she laughed. Her previous relationship with actor James Norton ended in 2018, with Buckley diplomatically telling The Times, “It was acrimonious, but it’s a tough job to have a relationship and he is a great man and we are great friends.”
For Buckley, the intersection of art and real life is where meaning lies. As she said of her daughter, “I think the thing I can hope to impart to her, and I’m sure she’s going to go on her whole own trajectory, and she should, is we have one life.” The message resonates not only in her work but in the fiercely protected privacy of her family, a rare feat in today’s celebrity culture. As awards season rolls on, fans and industry insiders alike will be watching to see what Buckley does next—both on screen and, perhaps, in those rare, candid glimpses behind the curtain.
