Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley says she finds it deeply rewarding to be “engaged in so many different ways” during such a momentous time in her life.
The Kerry-born actor, who welcomed a baby girl with her husband Freddie last year, said her daughter has “put everything into perspective”.
Speaking to Patrick Kielty on Friday’s Late Late Show on RTÉ One, alongside The Bride! writer-director Maggie Gyllenhaal, Buckley shared: “I did this for three months [The Bride! shoot], then I’d two weeks, and then I went into shooting Hamnet. I mean that was a brilliant journey and I think a lot of what I discovered in myself, in being the bride, was a woman who is uncompromising and demanding about her mind and body and her heart.”
She continued: “My heart was cracked wide open in the most alive and real way in this love story – and in this mind story – coming into Hamnet and actually distilling all of that energy into the ground and into motherhood was just an absolute gift.”
Asked how becoming a parent has impacted her, the BAFTA and IFTA winner said: “It’s the best way to wake up in the morning, and the best way to go to bed at night.”
“It puts everything into perspective, it kind of grounds you,” she explains. “I’m very lucky to do what I love as a woman, and I’m very lucky to love as a mother. That’s just an absolute gift to get to recognise myself in both of those things beside each other in this moment.”
Jessie Buckley’s The Bride! received its world premiere in London on Thursday night
The 36-year-old actress said, while her schedule is busier than it has ever been, it feels immensely fulfilling.
“I don’t know if I’ve ever had that much time anyway,” she said. “I’m not the kind of person that’s lying around waiting for something to happen. I love life. I need life. I need the world. I need my mind to be engaged. It’s so brilliant to be engaged in so many capacities at this time.”
She added: “Sometimes it’s really tiring, and some mornings I wake up and I do not know who I am or where I am. Luckily, I have incredible people around me that can hold that place as well, because being a new mom can be hard, sometimes. It’s no joke to be born, and as a new mom, you are being born in a new identity too.
“I definitely feel that in every capacity of my life right now. In some ways it’s made me really alert to my life, and to her life, and what we’re going to do together,” Buckley explained.
Director Maggie Gyllenhaal said she had to fight for Buckley to take part in The Bride!
The Bride!, written and directed by Gyllenhaal, follows Frankenstein’s Monster (Christian Bale) as he travels back to 1930s Chicago to ask scientist Dr Euphronious (Annette Bening) to create a companion by reviving a murdered young woman, The Bride (Buckley).
Gyllenhaal said she had to fight for Buckley to take part, explaining: “Once it had been written, I couldn’t imagine anyone else but Jessie doing it and I just wasn’t going to stop until I had her.”
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With the Oscars looming, it looks set to be a family affair for the Killarney native, who is up for the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role for her performance in Hamnet.
“My whole family are coming. My brother just came to the BAFTAs, he made this unbelievably heroic journey from the Arctic. He’s a mountain guide so he sent a video at 6am on Saturday morning where he began his journey being dropped off in what looked like the middle of the moon and he made a twelve-hour trip to BAFTAs.”
She continued: “Mom, dad, my sister from Australia. My sister from New Zealand. My other sister who is in Cork. They are all coming.”
Patrick Kielty met Jessie Buckley and Maggie Gyllenhaal in London this week for a chat
The Late Late Show, Fridays, RTÉ One and RTÉ Player, 9:35pm.