FACE IS FAMILIAR: Jessie Buckley

Currently starring as Army wife Honor Martin in The Last Post (9pm, BBC1), Jessie is someone you can expect to see a lot more of in the future…

A star is born: Growing up in Kerry, Ireland, Jessie went to music school at the age of 12, and plays piano, harp and clarinet. In 2008, aged 18, she took part in BBC talent show I’d Do Anything, a search for an unknown to play Nancy in Cameron Mackintosh’s production of Oliver!. Jodie Prenger won, but Jessie was a close second (and preferred by head judge Andrew Lloyd Webber). Offered the chance to understudy Nancy, she declined in favour of starring in the West End revival of A Little Night Music. We have liftoff…: In 2013, Jessie graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and starred in the

West End production of Henry V with Jude Law; two years later, she was in Kenneth Branagh’s production of The Winter’s Tale.

Leading lady: Jessie reached a wider audience in 2016, playing Marya in the BBC’s acclaimed adaptation of Tolstoy’s War & Peace. She’s been dating co-star James Norton ever since. More recently, she co-starred with Tom Hardy in the BBC drama Taboo.

Up next: Jessie, 27, will next be seen in the films Beast and Country Music, and in a new BBC adaptation of Wilkie Collins’s novel The Woman In White.

Though not a fan of the limelight (‘Having to look nice or “present” myself at premieres, I find that really unnerving’), she may just have to get used to it…