Behind the scenes with the best actress Oscar nominees at the 2026 Academy Awards

Watch scenes from the performances nominated for the Oscar for best actress, as well as interviews with the nominees below. The 98th Academy Awards will be presented Sunday, March 15. 

Jessie Buckley, “Hamnet”

Adapted from Maggie O’Farrell’s novel, “Hamnet” is a fictionalized tale about the death of William Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet. It imagines that the tragedy inspired him to write his timeless work, “Hamlet.” Oscar nominee Jessie Buckley plays Agnes, the wife of William Shakespeare (portrayed by fellow Irish actor Paul Mescal), and it is her emotional performance that both grounds the story and elevates it to a universal tale of pain, grief and acceptance.

Buckley (who was previously nominated for an Academy Award for “The Lost Daughter”) first gained attention on the British talent show, “I’d Do Anything,” singing in front of Andrew Lloyd Webber. He praised her, saying, “Jessie has the sacred flame of star quality.”

Theater roles followed, including Shakespeare performances. She also starred in the films “Wild Rose,” “I’m Thinking of Ending Things,” and “Women Talking,” and the TV series “Fargo.”

Buckley told “Sunday Morning” that performing the Bard changed everything for her: “I think before, I felt like music was the only way to contain what was kind of wanting to come out, and then Shakespeare’s words and his worlds were so titanic that it just made me realize how powerful words could be,” she said.

For “Hamnet,” she said that when she started shooting the more difficult scenes, like the death of her child, she told her husband she needed to go away for two weeks. So, Buckley went to Hampstead Heath, a vast green space in London, where she’d go swimming each morning. “I just need to be in nature and start my day and wake up that way, and then go to the set and see what came out,” she said. What came out was a performance radiating fire and tenderness. 

She says director Chloé Zhao (an Oscar-winner for “Nomadland”) reminded her cinema is not just escapism. “Our jobs as actors and the storytellers are to touch the most heightened expressions that are too hard to hold on our own,” Buckley said. “I get to incubate the bits of us, myself, the shadow bits.”

“Hamnet” is nominated for 8 Academy Awards, including best picture. 

Rose Byrne, “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You”

Rose Byrne, whose career has included memorable comedic performances in such films as “Bridesmaids” and “Spy,” delivers a devastating dramatic performance as a woman at the end of her rope in writer-director Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You.”

Byrne plays Linda, a working mother dealing with increasingly taxing hardships – from a very sick child with a feeding tube in her stomach, to a plumbing disaster that’s left a hole in her apartment ceiling, forcing her into a sketchy motel – all while her husband is out of town. Even her therapist (played by Conan O’Brien) isn’t willing to cut her any slack.

In an extended conversation with “Sunday Morning,” Byrne said that Bronstein’s script was like nothing she’d read before. “My gut reaction, I still remember, like, what I read really reflected the film you see in that it’s, like, disorienting. You’re like, where am I? What’s happening? Who’s this character? And slowly more information comes in and so it’s compelling. I was intrigued. And then there was a lot of horror in there too, but then there was very dark comedy – like I could find places to laugh.”

Byrne said she and Bronstein spent several weeks in rehearsal: “I would just go over to her house and we sat at her kitchen table for three days a week and we just combed through the screenplay from the very first word to the end. She shared stories. She was very candid with me about her experience. And I had a million and one questions about this character and who was she before? We don’t know anything about her. And how I respond to a crisis is very different to how she responds. The character has a lot of hostility, and why? And where is that coming from? Why is that her default? And so it was fun.”

Byrne received her first Oscar nomination for her performance, and won the Golden Globe. Talking of the awards season, she said, “I can’t have expectations around anything, because it’s so out of my control. All I can control is what I did between action and cut. And I can put effort into other stuff, but that’s what I love, and that’s the moment that I love the most. And it’s mine, you know?”

Kate Hudson, “Song Sung Blue”

Kate Hudson may have had “CBS Sunday Morning” to thank for her role in the musical biopic “Song Sung Blue,” the story of musical impersonators Mike and Claire Sardina, who teamed up to form a Neil Diamond tribute act by the name of Lightning & Thunder.

In April 2024, the show aired a profile of Hudson and her blossoming music career, including the release of her album “Glorious.” In an interview with “Sunday Morning,” Hugh Jackman, who had been working with writer-director Craig Brewer on developing “Song Sung Blue,” saw the story, and texted Brewer: “Kate Hudson is Claire. Claire is Kate.” Brewer’s response: “Oh my God, perfect.”

In an extended conversation with “Sunday Morning,” Hudson said the script for “Song Sung Blue” read like an epic: “One that’s reminiscent of movies that we love,” she said. “It had so many themes about love. Great love story, but it’s also a love story to family, and to music, and to fandom. And then, inside of this big love story is just, like, these people who have so much resilience and grit. And I was like, I don’t get to see these very often.”

Hudson, who was nominated for playing a rock groupie (sorry, a “band aide”) in Cameron Crowe’s “Almost Famous,” said getting this type of script was rare: “I think that the second I became famous as the Andie Anderson ‘How to…’ girl and rom-com kind of success, getting out of how people want to see you in that light – especially as a woman – is really hard, is very challenging.”

Regarding her singing, as Claire and as the musical artists Claire impersonates, Hudson said, “I don’t see my voice as like the greatest technical instrument, but in terms of performance, I can change my voice. I can change it to what the character is demanding of my voice, and try to lean into more Patsy Cline sound. The hardest thing for me was finding my own voice. Because I’ve done so much singing in other things – whether it be in school and theater or singing other people’s music – finding your own instrument that is connected to, like, your soul, it was a much harder thing for me than finding out how to use the instrument to get certain sounds for Patsy.

“I love singing as Patsy. I wish I had, like, two more Patsy Cline songs!”

Renate Reinsve, “Sentimental Value”

Norwegian actress Renate Reinsve became an international star in 2021 with her title role in Joachim Trier’s aching romantic comic-drama “The Worst Person in the World.” For “Sentimental Value,” she earned her first Academy Award nomination.

A self-described “nerdy girl,” who grew up in a rural town in Norway, Reinsve enrolled in the Oslo National Academy of the Arts in 2011. As a student, she made her movie debut in Trier’s “Oslo, August 31st.” 

She told “CBS Saturday Morning” that movies helped her understand her life. “I remember the first time I saw Isabelle Huppert, the French actress. I just couldn’t understand how it was possible to be that out of control and in control at the same time.”

While she found steady work on stage, she struggled to get other film jobs. Then, a decade after her screen debut, Trier reached out again, just in time, with a part he’d written especially for her. “Yeah, I had given up. I was like, ‘Okay, I’m done. I’m going to do something else,'” Reinsve said. “And then he called me like the next day. Really weird!” Her performance in “The Worst Person in the World” won her the best actress award at the Cannes Film Festival.

She’s now reunited with Trier for “Sentimental Value.” Reinsve plays Nora, an emotionally fragile actress, who is estranged from her father, Gustav (best supporting actor nominee Stellan Skarsgård), who’d abandoned his family when Nora was a child. Their reunion, following the death of Nora’s mother, stirs up the family’s complicated history. 

Trier said of his 38-year-old star, “The camera can read her mind.”

Reinsve told “CBS Saturday Morning” that allowing the camera to see that is “a lot of work.” “I have all these layers that I want to play up against each other, and for me it’s like a puzzle. It’s always fun. Even though I’m playing grief or something, I try to find as many layers.”

In a Q&A held at last fall’s New York Film Festival, where “Sentimental Value” had its New York premiere, Reinsve said the film grew out of her collaboration with Trier on their previous film “The Worst Person in the World.” Reinsve said there was a big difference between Julie, her character in “The Worst Person in the World,” and Nora: “Julie was very naive and open and free and in an environment that that was a lot freer. This is more contained, and Nora carries a lot more emotional weight.”

In an interview for The Playlist, Reinsve described the attraction of playing an actress who is unsure of herself to a startling degree. “I think what is kind of circling around is how I enjoyed playing with what she knew about herself and what she didn’t know about herself. And I think you’d see that in the first beat of the movie or the introduction of her character, where she goes on stage and she is carrying so much emotional weight that she doesn’t know how to process it. She doesn’t know everything that’s going on inside of her.”

But she doesn’t see Nora’s problems with stage fright as her own: “I really know how to facilitate my fear,” she said. “My fear is my friend. I have it, I have a lot of fear, but I feel I can kind of delegate it into the character and know how to use it. But I have seen someone next to me go into that panic. So, I was kind of inspired by someone. I’ve seen that almost exact thing happening, and it’s, of course, tragic when it happens, but it is a lot of fun, and I personally love playing panic scenes. And finally, to get to do something that had humor in it was really great. I did like a lot of humor when I worked in the theater, but I worked on a lot of heavy roles, dramatic roles, after I started doing movies five years ago.”

“Sentimental Value” is nominated for nine Academy Awards, including best picture and best international feature film.

Emma Stone, “Bugonia”

For Emma Stone, Greek writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos has become an impassioned collaborator. Following their 2018 film “The Favourite,” an 18th century drama in which Stone played a servant in the court of Britain’s Queen Anne, Stone starred in “Poor Things” (winning her second Academy Award), and “Kinds of Kindness,” as well as an experimental short film, “Bleat,” and a music video. Their latest film is “Bugonia,” a black comedy about a kidnapping victim engaged in a battle of wills with her two not-very-bright captors.

Stone plays Michelle Fuller, a Big Pharma corporate executive, who becomes the target for a pair of conspiracy theorists (Jesse Plemons and Aidan Delbis) convinced not only that her company is despoiling the Earth, but that Michelle herself is an alien engaged in a global plot to end the world.

“It’s clear that I love working with Yorgos and I love the material he’s drawn to and the characters he explores,” Stone said at a Venice Film Festival press conference.

Stone had worked before with many on the “Bugonia” team as well. “What it ends up feeling like is a really comforting and safe environment to explore and feel as free as possible, because you know these people. I know everybody says that ‘we’re a family’ thing, but it really does feel like that.”

In an interview with Plemons on Entertainment Tonight, Stone described how the character of Michelle sees herself as a hero: “I think that Michelle’s modus operandi is to improve upon civilization through science. So obviously, in the pharmaceutical world, in many ways, in our real world, this has been done, and also can be incredibly challenging, tricky, and have negative effects. But I think that her belief is that she is contributing to the greater good of humanity, and helping, or at least attempting, to help save lives.”

She talked with The Associated Press about playing a ruthless corporate executive – one who makes pronouncements that the staff should feel free to leave the office by 5:30 p.m. (unless they have work to do). “Speaking these sorts of corporate-trained platitudes was really fascinating, to learn how to sort of give the illusion of humanity and connection, but done in a way that’s obviously allowed through HR,” Stone said.

“Bugonia” is nominated for four Academy Awards, including best picture.

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