Actress Jessie Buckley praises motherhood in emotional Oscars speech

Irish actress Jessie Buckley won the Best Actress Academy Award for her role in the film "Hamnet," and in her moving acceptance speech, praised motherhood in a way rarely heard in the entertainment industry.

Key Takeaways:

• Jessie Buckley won the Oscar for her role as Anne Hathaway, the wife of William Shakespeare, as they grieve the loss of their son, Hamnet.

• In her acceptance speech, she praised marriage and motherhood, and dedicated the award to mothers everywhere.

• The positive message about parenting is in sharp contrast to the negative message frequently espoused by Hollywood celebrities.

The Details:

Buckley became the first Irish woman in history to win a Best Actress Oscar, and she closed her acceptance speech with a message in Gaelic to honor that. But the bulk of her speech focused on marriage and motherhood, and how it has positively impacted her life.

In 2023, she married Freddie Sorensen, a mental health worker and former TV producer, and they welcomed their first child, a baby girl, in 2025. After acknowledging the other nominees and the producers of "Hamnet," Buckley spent most of the speech talking about her family and the impact motherhood has had on her life. She began:

"Fred, I love you, man. I love you. You're the most incredible dad. You're my best friend, and I want to have 20,000 more babies with you. I do.I do. 

And Isla, my little girl who is eight months, who has absolutely no idea what's going on and is probably dreaming of milk, but this is kind of a big deal, and I love you, and I love being your mom, and I can't wait to discover life beside you."

She continued:

"[T]o get to know this incandescent woman, and journey to understand the capacity of a mother's love is the greatest collision of my life. It's, um... it's Mother's Day in the UK today. So 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 recognizing me in this role. This is the greatest honor. I can't even believe it."

Jessie Buckley Wins Best Actress | 98th Oscars Speech (2026)

She further commented on the importance of motherhood in comments made after the ceremony:

“First Irish woman to win and on Mother’s Day — it feels like some kind of crazy alchemy that all of these things are colliding on a day like today.

My daughter got her first tooth this week, I woke up with her lying on my chest, snuggling me. I feel like what a gift to get to explore motherhood through this incredible mother this is and was, and then to become one myself, and then to receive this recognition of the incredible role mothers play in our world on this day is something I will never, ever forget.”

The Other Side:

Celebrities have increasingly framed motherhood as an obstacle to career success, often while promoting abortion as the superior alternative.

Women like Michelle Williams, Stevie Nicks, Alyssa Milano, and Cecily Strong have all positively spoken about having abortions, and how they are glad they could kill their children, or they would not have had their successful careers. Actress Busy Philipps openly credited abortion for her “beautiful life.”

Williams is one of the most notable examples. While noticeably pregnant, she accepted a Golden Globes award, and in her speech, she advocated for abortion. She also insinuated she had undergone an abortion procedure at some point in her past, and credited it for her successful acting career.

“I’m grateful for the acknowledgment of the choices I’ve made, and I’m also grateful to have lived at a moment in our society where choice exists. Because as women and as girls, things can happen to our bodies that are not our choice. I’ve tried my very best to live a life of my own making, and not just a series of events that happened to me, but one that I could stand back and look at and recognize my handwriting all over — sometimes messy and scrawling, sometimes careful and precise — but one that I had carved with my own hand," she said, adding:

"And I wouldn’t have been able to do this without employing a woman’s right to choose, to choose when to have my children and with whom.”

Yet it is not empowering to argue that women must kill their own children to be successful. Instead, it upholds a misogynistic status quo that causes women to fear that having a child will negatively impact her education, career, or future.

Actress Christina Applegate recently wrote about her past abortion, seemingly with regret and bitterness at feeling that she had to abort her baby so she could "entertain this f--king world."

The Bottom Line:

Women shouldn't have to choose between a family and a career. And far from what abortion activists claim, women are capable of raising children while forging successful careers.