Anya Taylor-Joy
1981
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. 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.
April 1996
Anya Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy (/ˈænjə/ ANN-yə; born 16 April 1996) is an actress and model. She has received several accolades, including a Critics' Choice Award, a Golden Globe Award and a Screen Actors Guild Award. In 2021, Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
April 1996
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. Taylor-Joy has stated that her birth in Miami was a "fluke" as her parents had simply been on vacation in the city at the time; however, because of her birth place she holds United States citizenship due to the country's jus soli nationality law. Her father is an Argentine of English and Scottish ancestry, son of a British father, Alfred Royal Taylor, and an Argentine-British mother, Violet Mary Forrest. Taylor-Joy's mother was born in Zambia, to an English diplomat father, David Joy, and a Spanish mother, Montserrat Morancho Saumench, from Barcelona. She is the youngest of six siblings, four from her father's previous marriage.
2016
In 2016, she was cast opposite James McAvoy in M. Night Shyamalan's Split, where she played Casey Cooke, a young 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; Tashia 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.
2016
Taylor-Joy has received several accolades, including the Empire Award for Best Newcomer and a nomination for the Saturn Award for Best Performance by a Younger Actor in 2016, the Trophée Chopard in 2017, and 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.
2017
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.
April 2018
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.
October 2020
Taylor-Joy will star in Edgar Wright's psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, which is scheduled for release in October 2021. 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." In October 2020, it was announced that Taylor-Joy had been cast as the titular character in the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa.
November 23, 2020
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. 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.
December 2020
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.
