Killarney's Jessie Buckley honoured at the 2023 Oscar Wilde awards in LA

Killarney native and one of the most recognisable stars in the world right now, Jessie Buckley, may not have picked up an Academy Award this year but her stellar work and talent was deservedly recognised last week at the 2023 Oscar Wilde Awards.

Jessie, who was an Academy Award nominee last year, was presented was last Thursday night presented with her Oscar Wilde Award by Sarah Polley, the director of Jessie’s latest film ‘Women Talking’.

Polley who on Sunday won the Academy Award for ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ for the film praised Jessie for being “the most alive actor I have ever seen.... She’s impossibly brave and impossibly funny, joyful, curious, playful, and interested in the world. Her power comes from an insatiable curiosity about the things the rest of us back away from.”

For her own part, Jessie said in her acceptance speech that her own love of acting began at the age of 7 when she was brought by her mother to a production of ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ in Killarney.

It was this experience, she said, sparking a passion in her for performing.

She admitted in her speech that she finds the whole premise of receiving awards season to be, in her own words, “ a little bewildering”.

I usually get kind of squashed like some kind of sausage into a dress and can’t wait to get home and like, have chips and tequila, and put my pajamas on,” she said to laughs from the audience.

Echoing the message of what the entire night is about, Jessie expressed her immense pride at being Irish.

“To be here today, to be part of a community that celebrates Irishness is so bloody, f***ing wonderful,” she told the crowd.

“I’m so grateful to do something that I love, and I never take it for granted. I am Irish, and so proud.”