The 36-year-old is up for Best Actress at the Academy Awards for her performance in ‘Hamnet’
The 36-year-old from Killarney, County Kerry, credited a love of music and theatre for helping her with her recovery, but did not specify which eating disorder she had.
She told Lauren Laverne on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs: “I had an eating disorder, and it took time, and it took a lot of help, and also it was depression…
“I didn’t know how to be alive the way I wanted to be, and it was difficult, but I do not for a second regret it, and I think I’ve been able to transform it and recognise our vulnerabilities as humans in the world.
“You know, you can’t walk through life not being affected, but you can transform that into something that allows you to be more human and alive in the way that you want to be.
“And I’m very grateful for everybody who helped me along the way with that, and for the people who held space for that…
“I’ve been in therapy since I was 17, I still go every week.”
Jessie Buckley spoke about her mental health (Duncan Barker/BBC/PA)
Jessie Buckley’s style evolution
Buckley said her audition to get into the Guildford School of Acting went “terribly”, but that same weekend there was an open audition for I’d Do Anything, the BBC reality competition she finished runner-up in.
The top prize of the part of Nancy in a West End production of Oliver went to the winner, English actor Jodie Prenger. Buckley received an offer to be her understudy, but turned it down.
“Absolute gumption [to turn it down], the audacity,” she said. “I don’t know where I got it. I just kind of felt in my bones no, I don’t think this is for me, and I really didn’t know how the business worked.”
Not knowing an agent would traditionally reject an offer, Buckley said she walked to theatre producer Cameron Mackintosh’s office to tell him herself.
Macintosh recommended she attend a Shakespeare workshop at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Rada). She would later go on to graduate from the drama school with a BA in acting.
Buckley revealed she was briefly suspended during her time at Rada – students were prohibited from performing outside the school, and she was found to be making money as a singer.
“My misdemeanour was singing, which is like, my felonies are pathetic.
“I really should smoke a cigarette and do hard, bad things. You’re not meant to work when you’re in college and in between.
“I never worked while it was during term time, but in between, I had no option. I had to pay my rent and buy food.”
Buckley has recently received a string of awards for her performance as William Shakespeare’s wife Agnes Hathaway, historically known as Anne, in the film adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s novel Hamnet.
The actor also said she realised acting was “essential” for her wellbeing and “like water to me” after her appendix “almost burst” during one of her earliest performances and she refused to leave until the play was finished, when she was then taken to hospital.
She continued: “When I moved to London, I still wasn’t out of the woods.
“I think there were moments where I was like, ‘if I don’t get better here, this music, this being part of theatre – I’m not going to be able to do this any more, and I probably won’t survive’.
“And that was the thing that turned it in my head, I was like, ‘I don’t want to sacrifice that, this is bigger than that’, and won.”
Jessie Buckley has been a juggernaut through awards season (Ian West/PA)
Buckley also recounted her time on BBC talent show I’d Do Anything, which was about the search for an actress to play Nancy in a West End production of Oliver!, and which catapulted her to fame.
In an interview with British Vogue in January, she spoke about being criticised for her appearance during her time on the show.
Expanding on this, Buckley told BBC’s Laverne: “I don’t like that part of it.
“I think that was a young woman who’s trying to discover her body and herself, like we all do. And I wish that hadn’t happened.
“I think I was putting a brave face on, because really what I wanted to do was sing and I wanted to act, and I wanted to be part of this industry, and all of a sudden you had to be a certain kind of person.
“And I just wasn’t, I never will be. That’s just not me.”
Buckley added: “I’m so proud of that girl. I think she did great and I don’t regret any of it.”
In the podcast, she also spoke about her “extraordinary” mother, and said: “My parents are no longer together, and she lives in Dublin, and she’s writing her own story right now at 60 years of age, and I’m so proud of her.”
She sounded emotional as she gave her first song choice, which was a rendition of her mother, Marina, singing O Holy Night in church.
Listen to the full Desert Island Disc episode on BBC Sounds and BBC Radio 4 from Sunday at 10am.
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*This article was amended at 6.55pm on March 8. 2026, to correct the spelling of Cameron Mackintosh’s name