Anya Taylor-Joy
1981
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. That 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.
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 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.
April 1996
Taylor-Joy was born on 16 April 1996 in Miami, Florida, to Dennis Alan Taylor, a former banker and recipient of the MBE and the OBE, and Jennifer Marina Joy, a psychologist. She has said her birth in Miami was a "fluke", since her parents had been holidaying in the city at the time; 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, the 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.
2016
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. 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. It 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 horror mystery Marrowbone, whose ensemble cast critics praised; 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.
2016
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.
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, an adaptation of Jane Austen's 1815 novel of the same name. The film, and her performance, received positive reviews, 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. It was originally intended for release in April 2018 but experienced several delays; it was released during the pandemic.
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; it wasn't released until April 2021. In 2021, she starred in Edgar Wright's psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, released in October 2021.
October 2020
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 8 April 2022, by Focus Features. In October 2020, it was announced that she had been cast as the titular character in the Mad Max: Fury Road prequel Furiosa.
November 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. The series and her performance received widespread critical acclaim. On 23 November 2020, Netflix announced that it had been seen by 62 million households since its release, becoming its "biggest scripted limited series to date." Darren Franich of Entertainment Weekly called Taylor-Joy's 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 "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.
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 year, she was also cast in the drama film The Sea Change.
September 2021
In September 2021, she 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 21 December 2022.
