Anya Taylor-Joy

• 1. A Birth By Accident

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  Anya Taylor-Joy was born in Miami on the 16th of April 1996, in a city her parents were only visiting on vacation. She calls her birth there a "fluke". That accident gave her American citizenship. She nevertheless grew up in Buenos Aires and London, and by her own account she struggled to fit in at school. This documentary asks how a girl who felt like an outsider became an actress known for horror, period drama and large-scale blockbusters. It asks what a stranger saw in her outside a London department store. It asks why directors kept casting her in dark, unsettling stories. And it asks what it cost her to play a chess prodigy and a hardened desert warrior.

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• 2. Three Countries

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  Dennis Alan Taylor, her father, is a former banker who also raced offshore powerboats and won two UIM world offshore championships in the 1980s. Her mother, Jennifer Marina Joy, is a psychologist. The family tree was already international. Her father is an Argentine of English and Scottish descent. Her mother was born in Zambia to an English diplomat named David Joy and a Spanish mother from Barcelona, Montserrat Morancho. Anya was the youngest of six children, four of them from her father's earlier marriage.

  In Buenos Aires she attended Northlands School. When she was six, the family moved to the Victoria area of London. She remembers the move as "traumatic". At first she refused to learn English, hoping the family would return to Argentina. Today she is fluent in both Spanish and English.

  Hill House International Junior School in Knightsbridge and then Queen's Gate School in South Kensington were her London schools, and she acted in school productions. Socially, though, school was hard. She recalls: "I didn't really feel like I fit 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."

  Dance was her first serious training. She studied ballet until the age of 15. The Knightsbridge neighbourhood around her junior school was about to matter to her in a very different way.

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• 3. Scouted Near Harrods

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  Outside Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, Taylor-Joy was walking her dog at the age of 17 when Sarah Doukas, founder of Storm Management, scouted her as a model. She signed with the agency on one condition. Acting had to remain her first passion and pursuit.

  The television series Downton Abbey supplied her next opening. She had almost turned down the modelling shoot promoting it, because she was studying for her GCSE examinations. During that shoot she ran errands for the crew, and she was reciting the Seamus Heaney poem "Digging" for a forthcoming screen test. Allen Leech, an actor on Downton Abbey, noticed her. He later introduced her to his agent, who signed her as an actress.

  The film Vampire Academy, released in 2014, gave her a first credit in name only. She played a background character called "Feeder Girl", and her scenes were dropped from the final cut. Television proved kinder. She played Philippa Collins-Davidson in one episode of the detective drama Endeavour. She then played Cassandra across six episodes of the 2015 adventure series Atlantis. She had begun pursuing acting at 16, and a horror film set among Puritans was already waiting.

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• 4. Breaking Through

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  The Witch, directed by Robert Eggers, premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. It follows a Puritan family whose New England farm sits beside woods haunted by evil forces. Taylor-Joy played Thomasin, and the role became her breakthrough.

  Critic Anthony Lane of The New Yorker called her "remarkable in the role". He saw wide-eyed innocence mixed with a trace of cunning. Awards followed quickly. She won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor and the Empire Award for Best Female Newcomer.

  Her reach extended to genre audiences as well. A Saturn Award nomination in 2016, for best performance by a younger actor, showed that horror and fantasy fans had noticed her too.

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• 5. Thrillers And Misfires

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  Morgan, a science fiction horror film directed by Luke Scott, gave her the title role in 2016. It received negative reviews and failed commercially. Even so, critic John Serba wrote that she "disarms us with a performance that keenly teeter-totters between little-girl innocent and dead-eyed viciousness." She also starred in Barry, a drama about a young Barack Obama during his first year at Columbia University in 1981. It premiered at the 2016 Toronto International Film Festival.

  Split, directed by M. Night Shyamalan, cast her opposite James McAvoy. She played Casey Cooke, a teenage girl abducted by a man with multiple personalities. The film grossed $278.5 million on a budget of $9 million.

  Cory Finley's directorial debut Thoroughbreds paired her with Olivia Cooke and with Anton Yelchin, in his final film role. Taylor-Joy played Lily, a high-school student who schemes to kill her stepfather through a deal with a drug dealer. It premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival, where David Ehrlich of IndieWire called her performance "captivating".

  Marrowbone, a horror mystery from Sergio G. Sánchez, came next. Tasha Robinson of The Verge wrote that she brought "a shy, appealing warmth" to an inconsistent character. That year she was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award and received the Trophée Chopard at the Cannes Film Festival. In December 2017 she also played Petronella Oortman in the BBC One miniseries The Miniaturist, based on Jessie Burton's novel.

  Glass arrived in 2019 as the final film in the Unbreakable trilogy. Taylor-Joy returned as Casey Cooke alongside McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson and Sarah Paulson. It grossed $247 million worldwide. She also appeared in Love, Antosha, a documentary about her late co-star Yelchin.

  Not every project that year landed. The animated musical Playmobil: The Movie and the biographical drama Radioactive, in which she played Irene Curie, were both commercial failures. She also voiced Brea in the fantasy series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. Her last role of 2019 was the starring part of Gina Gray in the BBC One crime drama Peaky Blinders, which ran for 11 episodes from 2019 to 2022.

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• 6. Emma And Beth

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  Autumn de Wilde's directorial debut Emma, released in 2020, adapted Jane Austen's novel of 1815. Taylor-Joy played Emma Woodhouse. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone deemed her "incandescent". Mark Kermode of The Guardian praised an "admirably spiky character who is less likable than some of her screen predecessors, and all the better for it". She received a Golden Globe nomination. That same year she appeared as Illyana Rasputin, also called Magik, a Russian mutant and sorceress, in The New Mutants. That superhero horror film had been meant for release in April 2018 but suffered several delays.

  The Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit gave her the role that made her famous. She played Beth Harmon, an orphaned chess prodigy who rises toward the top of the chess world while fighting drug and alcohol dependency. Netflix announced that 62 million households watched it in its first 28 days, making it the company's "biggest scripted limited series to date."

  Critics singled out her stillness. Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly wrote that 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." Caroline Framke of Variety found her "so magnetic that when she stares down the camera lens, her flinty glare threatens to cut right through it."

  The awards were substantial. She won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a miniseries or television film, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for outstanding female actor in a miniseries or television movie. She was also nominated for the Primetime Emmy for outstanding lead actress in a limited or anthology series or movie. In 2021, Time put her on its 100 Next list, with a tribute written by former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov.

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• 7. Epics And Exhaustion

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  Edgar Wright's psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, released in 2021, cast her as Sandie Collins. In it she sings Petula Clark's "Downtown", and a music video of her rendition was released. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal highlighted the "dazzling sense of purpose" in her portrayal.

  In 2022 she reunited with Robert Eggers, the director of The Witch, for The Northman. She starred opposite Alexander Skarsgård as Olga of the Birch Forest in a film based on the Scandinavian legend of Amleth. It received a positive critical reception. David O. Russell's period comedy Amsterdam, in which she played Libby Voze, received mixed reviews and failed commercially.

  Mark Mylod's black comedy thriller The Menu reached cinemas in November 2022. She starred opposite Nicholas Hoult and Ralph Fiennes, and the film earned largely positive reviews. Her performance brought another Golden Globe nomination. In 2023 she voiced Princess Peach in The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a role she repeats in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie of 2026.

  Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two gave her a cameo in 2024 as Alia Atreides. The casting was kept secret until she walked the red carpet at the film's London premiere.

  George Miller's Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road, made her the title character. Making it was not easy. She said: "I've never been more alone than making that movie... I don't want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard." Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian still called her "an overwhelmingly convincing action heroine".

  In 2025 she starred opposite Miles Teller in Scott Derrickson's romantic action film The Gorge, released on Apple TV+. She also starred with Chris Evans in the action comedy Sacrifice, for which she is an executive producer. On the 18th of August 2025 it was reported that she will play a young Joni Mitchell in a biopic directed by Cameron Crowe, with Meryl Streep as an older Mitchell.

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• 8. Beyond The Screen

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  The Hollywood Reporter placed her on its 2016 list of rising stars aged 35 and under, and W magazine named her on a similar list in 2017. In 2019 she appeared on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list. In 2020 the Associated Press named her its "Breakthrough Entertainer" of the year, while the New York Post called her its "Breakout Star of 2020".

  Her face has also travelled outside film. In 2016, her likeness was licensed from Storm Management to represent Valkyrie Cain on the tenth anniversary cover of the book Skulduggery Pleasant. It later appeared 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", and in Hozier's video for "Dinner & Diatribes" in 2019. In 2021 she hosted Saturday Night Live, in an episode shared with Lil Nas X.

  Brand work has followed too. She has been an ambassador for Viktor & Rolf, Tiffany & Co., Dior's fashion and makeup, and Jaeger-LeCoultre.

  On the 1st of April 2022, she married the musician Malcolm McRae in a private ceremony in New Orleans. The couple had begun dating in 2021. They held a second ceremony in September 2023 at the Palazzo Pisani Moretta in Venice, Italy.

  Her calendar still has entries. Dune: Part Three, in which she returns as Alia Atreides, is in post-production. Lucky, a miniseries on which she is also an executive producer, is listed for 2026.

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