Jessie Buckley has been on a winning streak this awards season for her phenomenal performance in Hamnet and, as expected, she's now topped it off by winning Best Actress at the Oscars in the least surprising win of the night.
By winning, Buckley become the first actor since Renée Zellweger in 2020 to win at all five major ceremonies in the Leading Actress category: the Critics' Choice, Golden Globes, BAFTAs, Oscars and Actor Awards (formerly known as the Screen Actors Guild awards).
But perhaps more importantly for her, Buckley has become the first-ever Irish actor to win Best Actress. There have been other Irish actors nominated for Best Actress – Saoirse Ronan (three times) and Ruth Negga – but they didn't win on the night.
Related: Oscars 2026 winners list in full
In terms of male actors, Daniel Day-Lewis has won Best Actor three times and Cillian Murphy won for Oppenheimer, but the only female Irish actor to triumph at the Oscars was Brenda Fricker, who won Best Supporting Actress for My Left Foot.
As she concluded her speech, Buckley said: "It's Mother's Day in the UK today. I would like to dedicate this to the beautiful chaos of a mother's heart. We all come from a lineage of women who continue to create against all odds. Thank you for recognising me in this role. This is the greatest honour, I can't even believe it."
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Buckley wasn't the only Oscar winner to create history at this year's ceremony, with Sinners cinematographer Autumn Durald Arkapaw becoming the first woman to win the Oscar for best cinematography.
In the other acting categories, Sean Penn joined an illustrious club of three-time acting winners alonside the likes of Daniel Day-Lewis and Meryl Streep, while Amy Madigan set a new record for the longest gap (40 years) between first nomination and first win as she won Best Supporting Actress.
KPop Demon Hunters also won two Oscars, with its win for Best Original Song marking the first-ever K-pop song to win the award.
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Movies Editor, Digital Spy Ian has more than 10 years of movies journalism experience as a writer and editor. Starting out as an intern at trade bible Screen International, he was promoted to report and analyse UK box-office results, as well as carving his own niche with horror movies, attending genre festivals around the world. After moving to Digital Spy, initially as a TV writer, he was nominated for New Digital Talent of the Year at the PPA Digital Awards. He became Movies Editor in 2019, in which role he has interviewed 100s of stars, including Chris Hemsworth, Florence Pugh, Keanu Reeves, Idris Elba and Olivia Colman, become a human encyclopedia for Marvel and appeared as an expert guest on BBC News and on-stage at MCM Comic-Con. Where he can, he continues to push his horror agenda – whether his editor likes it or not.
