Anya Taylor-Joy

Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy (/ˈænjə/ ANN-yə; born 16 April 1996) is anactress and model. She has received several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award, a SAG Award, and a Critics' Choice Television Award, and nominations at the BAFTA Film Awards and the Primetime Emmy Awards. In 2021, Time magazine placed her on the Time 100 Next list.

Born in Miami and raised in Buenos Aires and London, Taylor-Joy left school at age sixteen and began to pursue an acting career. After small television roles, she made her film debut with the lead role of Thomasin in the horror film The Witch (2015), which won her a Gotham Award and an Empire Award. She went on to star in the horror film Split and the black comedy Thoroughbreds (both 2017); that same year, she earned a BAFTA Rising Star Award nomination and won the Trophée Chopard from the Cannes Film Festival. She also appeared in the drama miniseries The Miniaturist (2017), the fifth series of Peaky Blinders and The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (both 2019), and the superhero film Glass (2019), reprising her role from Split. Taylor-Joy will voice Princess Peach in the upcoming Mario film (2022) and portray the title character in Furiosa (2024).

Taylor-Joy received praise for portraying the lead characters Emma Woodhouse in the Jane Austen adaptation Emma and Beth Harmon in the Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit (both 2020); for the latter, she won the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Movie/Miniseries, the Golden Globe for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film, the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie and received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy was born on 16 April 1996 in Miami, Florida, to Dennis Alan Taylor, a former banker who was awarded an MBE and the OBE, and Jennifer Marina Joy, a psychologist. She has said her birth in Miami was a "fluke", since her parents had simply been holidaying in the city at the time; however, because of her birthplace she holds American citizenship due to the country's jus soli nationality law. Her father is an Argentine of English and Scottish descent, son of a British father and an Argentine-British mother. Her mother was born in Zambia, to an English diplomat father, David Joy, and a Spanish mother from Barcelona. She is the youngest of six siblings, four from her father's previous marriage.

Taylor-Joy lived with her family in Buenos Aires and attended Northlands School until age six, when the family relocated to the Victoria area of London. She is fluent in both Spanish and English and holds dual British and American citizenship.Taylor-Joy experienced the move as "traumatic" and refused to learn English in hopes of moving back to Argentina. She was educated at Hill House and attended Queen's Gate School, acting in school productions. She left school at age sixteen, citing bullying from her fellow pupils as the reason. She recalled:

Argentina is all green and I had horses and animals everywhere. All of a sudden I was in a big city and didn't speak the language. I didn't really feel like I fitted in anywhere. I was too English to be Argentine, too Argentine to be English, too American to be anything. The kids just didn't understand me in any shape or form. I used to get locked in lockers. I spent a lot of time in school crying in bathrooms.

At age seventeen, she was scouted as a model, by Storm Management founder Sarah Doukas, while walking outside Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, London.

Beginnings and critical acclaim (2013-2019)

Taylor-Joy was removed from the final cut of her first acting role in the 2014 horror comedy Vampire Academy, with her role left uncredited. She made her television debut as Philippa Collins-Davidson in an episode of the detective drama series Endeavour, and followed this appearing in a multi-episode arc of the 2015 fantasy-adventure drama series Atlantis. Taylor-Joy's breakthrough role was in the feature film The Witch, a period horror film directed by Robert Eggers. The Witch tells the story of a Puritan family who encounter forces of evil in the woods beyond their New England farm. The film premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim and Taylor-Joy's performance as Thomasin was praised by critics. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker wrote "Taylor-Joy is remarkable in the role, her wide-eyed innocence entwined with a thread of cunning—proof either of her quick wits, scarcely unusual in a clever and curious girl, or of some fell purpose." The film was a commercial success, and she won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor and the Empire Award for Best Female Newcomer.

The following year, Taylor-Joy starred in Luke Scott's science fiction horror film Morgan, playing the title character; the film received negative reviews from critics and was a commercial failure, however Booth Michigan's John Serba wrote that "Taylor-Joy disarms us with a performance that keenly teeter-totters between little-girl innocent and dead-eyed viciousness.". She next starred in the drama film, Barry, which focused on a young Barack Obama during his first year at Columbia University in 1981. Barry premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival. The same year, Taylor-Joy's likeness was licensed from Storm Management to represent the character of Valkyrie Cain on the tenth anniversary book cover of Skulduggery Pleasant, and subsequently on the covers of the seventh, eighth, ninth, and fourteenth books in the series. She also appeared in the music video for Skrillex's remix of GTA's song Red Lips.

In 2016, she was cast opposite James McAvoy in M. Night Shyamalan's Split, where she played Casey Cooke, a teenage girl abducted by a man with multiple personalities (McAvoy). The film was a commercial success, grossing $278.5 million on a budget of $9 million. Her next film that year was Cory Finley's directorial debut Thoroughbreds. Co-starring Olivia Cooke and Anton Yelchin in his final film role, she played Lily, a high-school student who schemes to kill her stepfather via a contract with a drug dealer. Thoroughbreds premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival and David Ehrlich of IndieWire called her performance "captivating". Her third release in 2017 was Sergio G. Sánchez's Marrowbone, a horror mystery in which critics praised the ensemble cast; Tasha Robinson of The Verge noted that Taylor-Joy brought "a shy, appealing warmth" to an inconsistent character. She was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award and was awarded the Trophée Chopard at the Cannes Film Festival that same year. In December 2017, Taylor-Joy portrayed Petronella Oortman in the BBC One period drama miniseries The Miniaturist, based on Jessie Burton's novel of the same name.

Taylor-Joy reprised her role as Casey Cooke in the 2019 psychological superhero film Glass, the final film in the Unbreakable film trilogy, in which she features alongside James McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson and Sarah Paulson. The film was a commercial success, grossing $247 million worldwide, but received mixed reviews unlike its predecessor. Later that year, she made appearances in the documentary film Love, Antosha, which depicted the life and career of her late co-star Anton Yelchin, and in Hozier's music video for his song "Dinner & Diatribes". Her next two 2019 films—the animated musical adventure film Playmobil: The Movie and biographical drama film Radioactive—were commercial failures. She also voiced the character of Brea in the Netflix animated fantasy series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. In her final role of 2019, she played the starring role of Gina Gray in the BBC One period crime drama series Peaky Blinders.

Breakthrough and mainstream recognition (2020-present)

In 2020, Taylor-Joy starred alongside Johnny Flynn and Josh O'Connor as Emma Woodhouse in Autumn de Wilde's directorial debut Emma, a film adaptation of Jane Austen's 1815 novel of the same name. The film, and her performance, received positive reviews from critics and her chemistry with Flynn was considered its prime asset, with Metro's Emma Kelly writing "Taylor-Joy is delightful as Emma, encapsulating the rather unlikeable but still endearing heroine, and she has great chemistry with Flynn as the two bickering friends that have something else going on." Taylor-Joy also portrayed Illyana Rasputin/Magik, a Russian mutant and sorceress, in the superhero horror film The New Mutants. The film was originally intended for release in April 2018 but experienced several delays; it was released during the pandemic.

Taylor-Joy starred in the Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit as Beth Harmon, an orphaned chess prodigy on her rise to the top of the chess world while struggling with drug and alcohol dependency. Both the series and her performance received widespread critical acclaim and on November 23, 2020, Netflix announced that the series had been watched by 62 million households since its release, becoming "Netflix's biggest scripted limited series to date." Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly called her performance "darkly fascinating" and noted how she "excels in the quiet moments, [with] her eyelids narrowing as she decimates an opponent, [and] her whole body physicalizing angry desperation when the game turns against her." Similarly, Caroline Framke of Variety found her to be "so magnetic that when she stares down the camera lens, her flinty glare threatens to cut right through it." Taylor-Joy received numerous accolades for her performance, including winning a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild and a Critics' Choice Television Award.

In 2020, Taylor-Joy next appeared in the drama film Here Are the Young Men, directed by Eoin Macken and based on the novel of the same name by Rob Doyle, but it wasn't released until April 2021. In 2021, she starred in Edgar Wright's psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, which was released in October 2021.

Upcoming projects

Taylor-Joy re-teamed with filmmaker Robert Eggers for a starring role in the historical revenge film The Northman, which has been described as "a Viking revenge saga set in Iceland at the turn of the 10th century." and is scheduled to be released on April 8, 2022, by Focus Features. In October 2020, it was announced that Taylor-Joy had been cast as the titular character in the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa.

In December 2020, Scott Frank, the writer-director of The Queen's Gambit, announced that he hoped to film an adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Laughter in the Dark starring Taylor-Joy. In January 2021, she was cast in David O. Russell's period drama which will also star Robert De Niro, Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and Mike Myers. Since 2017, Taylor-Joy has been attached to star in Robert Eggers' remake of F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu. That same year, she was also cast in the drama film The Sea Change.

In September 2021, Taylor-Joy was announced to have been cast as the voice of Princess Peach in Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's Super Mario Bros., produced by Universal Pictures and Illumination and set to be released on December 21, 2022.

Remarking upon her performance in Thoroughbreds, David Ehrlich of IndieWire called Taylor-Joy "one of the world's best young actors". Her eyes, hair, cupid's bow, and accent have been cited as her trademarks. Since 2020, she has been chosen as the ambassador for brands such as Viktor & Rolf and Tiffany & Co. Since 2021, she has been selected as global brand ambassador for Dior's fashion and makeup. As ambassador of the brand, she is frequently seen wearing red Dior lipstick at awards shows as her "signature" look.

The Hollywood Reporter placed Taylor-Joy on their list of 2016 Hollywood's Rising Stars 35 and Under, and she was included in a similar list compiled by W magazine in 2017. In 2019, she appeared on the annual Forbes 30 Under 30 list, a compilation of "the brightest young entrepreneurs, innovators and game changers in the world". In 2020, she was named "Breakthrough Entertainer" of the Year by the Associated Press and "Breakout Star of 2020" by the New York Post. In 2021, Time magazine included Taylor-Joy on its 100 Next list of "emerging leaders who are shaping the future", with a tribute written by former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov.

Film

Key

Denotes films that have not yet been released

Year	Title	Role	Notes	Ref.
2015	The Witch	Thomasin
2016	Morgan	Morgan
	Barry	Charlotte Baughman
	Split	Casey Cooke
2017	Marrowbone	Allie
	Thoroughbreds	Lily Reynolds
2018	Crossmaglen	Ana	Short film
2019	Glass	Casey Cooke
	Love, Antosha	Herself	Documentary
	Playmobil: The Movie	Marla Brenner (voice)
	Radioactive	Irene Curie
2020	Emma	Emma Woodhouse
	Here Are the Young Men	Jen
	The New Mutants	Illyana Rasputin / Magik
2021	Last Night in Soho	Sandie
2022	The Northman		Post-production
	Untitled David O. Russell project		Post-production
	Untitled Mario film	Princess Peach (voice)	Post-production
TBA	The Menu	Margot	Filming

Television

Music videos

Taylor-Joy has received several accolades, including winning the Empire Award for Best Newcomer and being nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor in 2016, a nomination for the BAFTA Rising Star Award and winning the Trophée Chopard in 2017, and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film, the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actress in a Movie/Miniseries and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Actress in a Television Movie or Miniseries in 2021.