The following year, Taylor-Joy starred in Luke Scott's science fiction horror film Morgan, playing the title character. It received negative reviews and was a commercial failure, but 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; it 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 the covers of the seventh, eighth, ninth, and fourteenth books in the series, before she appeared in the music video for Skrillex's remix of GTA's song "Red Lips".
Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy (/ˈænjə/; born 16 April 1996) is an actress. She has won several accolades, including a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award, in addition to nominations for a BAFTA Film Award and a Primetime Emmy Award.
Taylor-Joy was born on 16 April 1996 in Miami, Florida, to Dennis Alan Taylor, a former banker, and Jennifer Marina Joy, a psychologist. Her father is an Argentine of English and Scottish descent, the son of a British father and an Anglo-Argentine mother. Her mother was born in Zambia to an English diplomat father, David Joy, and a Spanish mother from Barcelona. She has stated that her birth in Miami was a "fluke", since her parents had been vacationing in the city at the time; because of her birthplace, she holds American citizenship due to the country's jus soli nationality law. She is the youngest of six siblings, four of whom are from her father's previous marriage.
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). It 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. It co-starred Olivia Cooke and Anton Yelchin in his final film role. Taylor-Joy played Lily, a high-school student who schemes to kill her stepfather via a contract with a drug dealer. It premiered at the 2017 Sundance Film Festival; David Ehrlich of IndieWire called her performance "captivating". Her third release in 2017 was Sergio G. Sánchez's horror mystery Marrowbone; Tasha Robinson of The Verge wrote that Taylor-Joy brought "a shy, appealing warmth" to an inconsistent character. Taylor-Joy was nominated for the BAFTA Rising Star Award, and was awarded the Trophée Chopard at the Cannes Film Festival that year. In December 2017, she portrayed Petronella Oortman in the BBC One period drama miniseries The Miniaturist, based on Jessie Burton's novel of the same name.
Taylor-Joy has received several accolades. She won the Empire Award for Best Newcomer and being nominated for the Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor in 2016. The following year, she was a nominee for the BAFTA Rising Star Award and the recipient of the Trophée Chopard. Taylor-Joy won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film, and the Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie in 2021.
The Hollywood Reporter named 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.
In 2020, Taylor-Joy starred as Emma Woodhouse in Autumn de Wilde's directorial debut Emma, an adaptation of Jane Austen's 1815 novel of the same name. Reviewing the film, Peter Travers of Rolling Stone deemed Taylor-Joy "incandescent". The Guardian critic Mark Kermode described Taylor-Joy as having created 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 Award nomination for her performance. Taylor-Joy also portrayed Illyana Rasputin/Magik, a Russian mutant and sorceress, in the superhero horror film The New Mutants. It was originally intended for release in April 2018 but experienced several delays; it was released in 2020.
In 2020, she 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. In 2021, she starred in Edgar Wright's psychological horror film Last Night in Soho. In the film, she performs the song "Downtown" by Petula Clark; a music video of Taylor-Joy's rendition was also released. Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal highlighted the "dazzling sense of purpose" in her portrayal. She was included on Time magazine's 100 Next list that same year.
Taylor-Joy appeared in the fifth and sixth seasons of the television crime drama Peaky Blinders (2019–2022), and played Emma Woodhouse in the period drama Emma (2020), which gained her a Golden Globe nomination. In 2020, she received acclaim and international recognition for her performance as chess prodigy Beth Harmon in the Netflix miniseries The Queen's Gambit, winning a Golden Globe and a Screen Actors Guild Award, as well as receiving a nomination for a Primetime Emmy. Taylor-Joy has since starred in the films Last Night in Soho (2021), The Northman (2022), The Menu (2022), and The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023).
Taylor-Joy began a relationship with American musician Malcolm McRae, frontman of the rock band More, in 2021. They married on 1 April 2022 in New Orleans. They held a second wedding during the last weekend of September 2023 at the Palazzo Pisani Moretta in Venice, Italy.
In 2022, Taylor-Joy reunited with The Witch director Robert Eggers for a starring role opposite Alexander Skarsgård in the historical epic The Northman. Based on the old Scandinavian legend of Amleth, the film was described as "a Viking revenge saga set in Iceland at the turn of century". It received a positive critical reception. Taylor-Joy then appeared in David O. Russell's period comedy Amsterdam, which received mixed reviews and failed commercially. Released the following month was Mark Mylod's black comedy thriller The Menu, in which Taylor-Joy starred opposite Nicholas Hoult and Ralph Fiennes. The film garnered largely positive reviews, and her performance gained her a Golden Globe Award nomination. The following year, Taylor-Joy had a voice role as Princess Peach in the animated film The Super Mario Bros. Movie.