Inside the rise of Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley whose dad lunged at John Barrowman after he slammed her as a “farm girl”
THE barbed comments thrown at a teenage Jessie Buckley week after week by John Barrowman would have been enough to put most aspiring starlets off showbusiness for life.
They were so harsh that when she came second on the BBC talent show I’d Do Anything in 2008 her furious dad reportedly went for the TV judge behind the scenes.
Fast forward 14 years and the tables have well and truly turned.
Jessie, 32, has been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, while Barrowman’s career has taken a nosedive.
While the one-time Dancing On Ice judge is being shunned for flashing at colleagues, Jessie is receiving critical plaudits for her incredible acting in screen drama The Lost Daughter and the sold-out West End show Cabaret.
“I’m in complete shock,” she declared as news of her Oscar nomination sank in.
“The Lost Daughter is so special to me. To be recognised for anything connected to it is just a wild dream come true.”
But while it may feel like a dream, it is certainly not a wild idea. She has grafted hard to get it.
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The Irish star, who moved to London aged 17, has overcome multiple setbacks by doing things her way.
She admitted feeling depressed and lonely after missing out on the prize on offer to the winner of I’d Do Anything — a starring role in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Oliver! stage show.
She said: “I was really sad. The adrenalin rush of being in that show got me through and for a little while I could forget.
Natural talent
“But after the show finished, I really hit that low point again. I was in London, in a big city by myself, and still not well because I’d just put a plaster over it.”
Jessie refused to be the understudy for I’d Do Anything’s winner Jodie Prenger and instead became a jazz singer at posh private members’ club Annabel’s.
Having been turned down by more than one drama school, she won a place at the top one — Rada, or the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, whose alumni include Kenneth Branagh, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Ralph Fiennes.
Since then she has made a name for herself in TV miniseries including The Woman In White in 2018 and Chernobyl in 2019, and movies such as Wild Rose, Judy and Misbehaviour.
She has risen to the top without social media and prefers to hang out with her non-showbiz pals rather than be seen at flash parties.
But Jessie has suffered heartache in her love life, enduring a painful break-up from James Norton, who she fell for while making the 2016 BBC drama War & Peace.
Now her Oscar-nominated performance alongside Olivia Colman in The Lost Daughter on the streaming service Netflix means she will also eclipse him.
That natural talent appears to have come from her parents in Killarney, County Kerry, who nurtured their own artistic ambitions. Her mum, harpist Marina Cassidy, dreamed of being an opera singer, while her dad Tim, a hotelier, has a talent for writing poetry.
Jessie, who has four siblings, said: “When I was younger, Mum was always singing at weddings and concerts. That’s when I got my first taste for it.
“My parents worked extremely hard to provide us with the best opportunities.”
They supported her passion for music, with Jessie gaining top grades at the piano, clarinet and harp at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
But she did not enjoy being sent away to a convent boarding school and left Ireland for London as soon as she could, aged just 17.
There she worked as a waitress, and was turned down by two drama schools in the capital before getting her big break in the Lloyd Webber-backed I’d Do Anything on TV.
The musicals maestro was blown away by Jessie’s singing, telling her: “You are an extraordinary, extraordinary performer.”
Lloyd Webber wanted Jessie to win and take the role of Nancy in his Oliver! show, but fellow judge Barrowman voted on week seven, eight and nine that the then 18-year-old Jessie should not go through. The public seemed to agree, voting for Blackpool’s Jodie instead.
But Barrowman’s view did not go down well with the Buckley family and he later revealed: “Jessie’s dad lunged at me after the show. But I understand that because he wanted his daughter to win.”
However he added cruelly: “It is a really tough part and if you put a girl from an Irish farm straight into doing that every day in the West End she won’t be able to take the pressure.”
Having opted not to be the understudy to the show’s winner Jodie, Jessie secured a role in the West End musical A Little Night Music.
But occasional acting roles weren’t enough to pay the rent, so she also worked in a clothes shop and sold cereal from a market stall before a drunken night out resulted in another career turn.
Jessie said: “I got really drunk one night in a club and sang, and the pianist was like, ‘Oh, I’d like to work with you’. I was like, ‘OK’. I didn’t know anything about jazz.”
But she learned quickly enough to secure a weekly slot at Annabel’s in Mayfair for a couple of years.
Tough job
She still had her sights set higher — although one prospective agent dismissed her chances of a long career because of her Irish accent.
Jessie said: “He made me speak in received pronunciation and I couldn’t do it because I was so nervous.
“At the end, he laughed and said, ‘Well, you will be nothing more than a cabaret singer’.” But Jessie didn’t give in — and finally she won a place at Rada, graduating in 2013. Three years of success on the stage was followed by one television hit after another.
In 2015 she started dating Norton, who is widely tipped to be the next James Bond, but conflicting filming schedules meant the couple were often apart for two months at a time.
In December 2017 it became clear they were no longer together when he was spotted smooching with actress Imogen Poots.
When Jessie was asked about Norton shortly afterwards she replied: “We have broken up, yes.
“It was acrimonious, but it’s a tough job to have a relationship and he is a great man and we are great friends.
“That’s it. How diplomatic can I sound?”
Unlike many other actors, Jessie seems to have little time for social media.
She said: “People don’t need to know what I think. I can put that into something paid, that I feel fulfilled by. I’m better at expressing these things in other people’s shoes.”
She has also refused to reveal who her current boyfriend is, preferring to keep him out of the limelight.
Even so, she is happy to let her hair down in private.
In The Lost Daughter she plays a younger version of Olivia Colman’s character, so the two stars don’t appear on screen together.
But that didn’t stop Jessie sharing a few drinks with the Oscar-winning Brit.
Jessie recalled: “We had such a good time, but we never actually worked together.
“We had a four-day crossover and we would drink rosé and have a huge sing-song, which was great until it was six o’clock and you had to go to work.”
It seems single-minded Jessie is going to continue carving out her own path, insisting she has “no interest” in making a superhero Marvel movie.
And understating her beauty, she self-deprecatingly said: “No one’s going to ask me to get into a leather catsuit any time soon, are they?”
After finishing her run with Eddie Redmayne in Cabaret, later this year she can be seen in big-screen drama Women Talking, with Frances McDormand and Ben Whishaw.
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There is no let-up for the talented Ms Buckley.
Perhaps that is because, as she once said: “Nothing has come easily.”
