Born in Miami and raised in Buenos Aires and London, Taylor-Joy dropped out of school at age 14. A few years later she began to pursue a career in modelling and acting. 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.
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,[5] and Jennifer Marina Joy, a psychologist. Her father is an Argentine of English and Scottish ancestry, son of British Alfred Royal Taylor and Argentine-British Violet Mary Forrest.[6][3] Anya's mother was born in Zambia, to an English diplomat father, David Joy, and a Spanish mother, Montserrat Morancho Saumench, from Barcelona.[7] She is the youngest of six siblings, four by her father's previous marriage.[4]
Taylor-Joy and her family moved from Miami to Buenos Aires when she was an infant and she attended Northlands School until age six, when the family relocated to the Victoria area of London.[3][8] She is fluent in both Spanish and English and holds triple British, American, and Argentine citizenship.[3][4] Taylor-Joy experienced the move as "traumatic" and refused to learn English in hopes of moving back to Argentina.[9] She was educated at Hill House and attended Queen's Gate School, acting in school productions. She dropped out of school at the age of 14, citing bullying from her classmates 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.[3]
Taylor-Joy moved to New York and spent the next two years between the United States and England.[3] At age sixteen, she was scouted as a model, by Storm Management founder Sarah Doukas, while walking outside Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, London.[10]
Career
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.[11] 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.[12] 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.[13]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."[14] The film was a commercial success,[15] and she won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor and the Empire Award for Best Female Newcomer.[16]
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.".[17] 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.[18] Taylor-Joy's likeness was used for the character Valkyrie Cain on the tenth anniversary cover of Skulduggery Pleasant, and subsequently on the seventh, eighth, ninth, and fourteenth books in the series of the same name. She also appeared in the music video for Skrillex's remix of GTA's song Red Lips.[19]
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.[27] The film was a commercial success, grossing $247 million worldwide,[28] but received mixed reviews unlike its predecessor.[29] 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".[30][31] Her next two 2019 films—the animated musical adventure film Playmobil: The Movie and biographical drama film Radioactive—were commercial failures.[32] She also voiced the character of Brea in the Netflix animated fantasy series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance.[33] In her final role of 2019, she played the starring role of Gina Gray in the BBC One period crime drama series Peaky Blinders.[34]
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,[35] 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."[36] 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.[37]
Taylor-Joy headlined the Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit, playing Beth Harmon, a chess prodigy struggling with drug and alcohol addiction as she strives to become the world's greatest chess player.[38] Both the series and her performance received widespread critical acclaim[39] and on November 23, 2020, Netflix announced that the series had been watched by 62 million households since its release,[40] becoming "Netflix's biggest scripted limited series to date."[41] 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."[42] 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."[43] Taylor-Joy received numerous accolades for her performance, including winning a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild and a Critics' Choice Television Award.[44] 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, which was released in April 2021.[45]
Upcoming projects
Taylor-Joy will star in Edgar Wright's psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, which is scheduled for release in October 2021.[46][47] She will then re-team 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."[48] In October 2020, it was announced that Taylor-Joy had been cast as the titular character in the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa.[49]
Taylor-Joy's eyes, hair and transatlantic accent have been described by the media as her trademarks.[55][56]
Commenting on her performance in Thoroughbreds, David Ehrlich of IndieWire called her "one of the world’s best young actors".[57] Taylor-Joy's eyes, hair and accent have been cited as her trademarks.[58][59] Since 2020, she has been chosen as the brand ambassador for brands such as Viktor & Rolf and Tiffany & Co.[60][61]
The Hollywood Reporter placed her on their list of 2016 Hollywood's Rising Stars 35 and Under and was included in a similar list compiled by W magazine in 2017.[62][63] 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".[64] In 2020, she was named as "Breakthrough Entertainer" of the Year by the Associated Press and "Breakout Star of 2020" by New York Post.[65][66] 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 ChampionGarry Kasparov.[67]
^Spangler, Todd (23 November 2020). "'The Queen's Gambit' Scores as Netflix Most-Watched Scripted Limited Series to Date". Variety. Archived from the original on 24 November 2020. Retrieved 25 November 2020. The way Netflix reports viewing is based on the number of viewers who have watched at least two minutes of a piece of content, which is very different from how the TV industry measures audience