Irish actress Jessie Buckley attended the Elle Women in Hollywood 2025 event at the Four Seasons Hotel in Beverly Hills on 17 November.
The Killarney woman was honoured on the night alongside Emily Blunt, Wunmi Mosaku, Teyana Taylor, Jennifer Aniston, Jayme Lawson, Chase Infiniti, Renate Reinsve, and Rose Byrne.
The Hamnet star wore a sparkling Ralph Lauren dress with intricate embellishments, which she paired with a red lip and sparkling earrings.
She took to the stage to deliver a vulnerable speech in which she discussed the many incredible women in her life, and particularly the influence her mother had on her as a storyteller.
Initially breathless and a little overwhelmed when she took to the stage, Buckley shared how grateful she was to be in a room with "so many extraordinary hearts and inspiring minds", as well as creatives and friends and supporters.
"I just fu**ing love ye all," she said.
She began her speech by thanking director Chloé Zhao, calling her a "true leader" and a "force of nature", before sharing a personal story about her mother.
"I want to tell you about a woman called Marina. Marina now works as a music psychotherapist in palliative care, but before that, she worked as a harpist and singer, playing in a room like this, in a corner, not being fully seen, fully heard, really listened to.
"But when she sang, it was like she was trying to save herself. She was trying to get something that was stuck 'out' and crack the curse."
"When I watched her sing, it was like watching life and death. And what happened after these moments was a type of magic because these men, women, strangers would walk up to her with tears in their eyes. It was like they had woken up.
"One of my strongest memories of feeling the wild effect of touching someone’s heart with a story was watching Marina, my mother, sing."
Reflecting on the female characters in Hamnet and the women in her own life, Buckley went on to say that she spent a lot of time pondering what it really means to be a woman.
"The women I know are brave, complex, deeply tender. Fuc**ing brilliant. Sexy, sexual, hungry, full-bodied, giant, uncompromising artists. They are world creators, word creators and human creatures who don't live in the corners. They are demanding, provocative and curious inventors."
"We are creating a new language that reflects the deepest, darkest, fullest, most vibrant particles of what it means to be fully alive.
"It's taken me time to unravel myself from the narrow-minded 'idea’ of what it means to be a woman in the world, and really listen to the stories of my mother, of my sisters, and the incredible women in this room, who have given me the greatest education, the greatest freedom, and the greatest privilege to discover a language that is full, through the hearts, bodies, and minds of the incredible women that I’ve been able to I live through in my work."
