Anya Taylor-Joy

Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy (; born 16 April 1996) is an actress. Born in Miami and raised in Buenos Aires and London, she left school at the age of 16 to pursue acting. After a series of small television roles, her breakthrough came with a leading role in the horror film The Witch (2015). Her career progressed with roles in the horror film Split (2016) and its sequel Glass (2019), the black comedy film Thoroughbreds (2017), the television crime drama series Peaky Blinders (2019–2022) and for playing Emma Woodhouse in the period drama Emma (2020).

Taylor-Joy gained wide recognition for playing Beth Harmon in the period drama miniseries The Queen's Gambit (2020), receiving the Golden Globe and SAG Award for Best Actress, and a nomination for the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress. She then starred in the horror film Last Night in Soho (2021), the action films The Northman (2022) and The Gorge (2025), the black comedy The Menu (2022), and the apocalyptic film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024) as Imperator Furiosa. She also voiced Princess Peach in the animated film The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023).

Early life and education

Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy was born 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, Montserrat Morancho. 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 US jus soli nationality law. She is the youngest of six siblings, four of whom are from her father's previous marriage.

Taylor-Joy lived with her family in Buenos Aires and attended Northlands School until the age of six, when the family moved to the Victoria area of London. She is fluent in Spanish and English. Taylor-Joy experienced the move as "traumatic" and initially refused to learn English in hopes of moving back to Argentina. She attended Hill House International Junior School and Queen's Gate School, acting in school productions. She struggled socially at school, recalling:

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.

Taylor-Joy initially trained in dance, studying ballet until the age of 15. At age 17, she was scouted as a model by Storm Management founder Sarah Doukas, while walking her dog outside Harrods department store in Knightsbridge, London. She signed with the agency on the condition that acting remain her first passion and pursuit. During a modelling shoot promoting the television series Downton Abbey, which she had almost rejected because she was studying for her GCSE examinations, Taylor-Joy was noticed by the Downton Abbey actor Allen Leech while running errands for the crew and while reciting the Seamus Heaney poem "Digging" for a forthcoming screentest. He later introduced her to his agent, with whom she signed as an actress.

Career

2013–2019: Early work and recognition

Taylor-Joy made her acting debut in the 2014 fantasy comedy-horror Vampire Academy, but her scenes as a background "Feeder Girl" were dropped from the final cut. She made her television debut as Philippa Collins-Davidson in an episode of the detective drama series Endeavour, followed by a multi-episode arc in the 2015 fantasy-adventure drama series Atlantis. That same year, she starred in The Witch, a period horror film directed by Robert Eggers, which tells the story of a Puritan family that encounters forces of evil in the woods beyond their New England farm. It premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival to critical acclaim. The role was her breakthrough. Anthony Lane of The New Yorker called Taylor-Joy "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." She won the Gotham Independent Film Award for Breakthrough Actor and the Empire Award for Best Female Newcomer.

In 2016, 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".

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 reprised her role as Casey Cooke in the 2019 psychological superhero film Glass, the final film in the Unbreakable film trilogy, appearing with McAvoy, Samuel L. Jackson and Sarah Paulson. It was a commercial success, grossing $247 million worldwide, Later that year, she appeared in the documentary film Love, Antosha, on the life and career of her late co-star Anton Yelchin; and in Hozier's music video for his song "Dinner & Diatribes".

Her next two 2019 films, the animated musical adventure film Playmobil: The Movie and biographical drama film Radioactive, were commercial failures. She also voiced the character of Brea in the fantasy series The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance. In her final role of 2019, she played the starring role of Gina Gray in the BBC One period crime drama series Peaky Blinders.

2020–present: Mainstream breakthrough

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.

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. Netflix announced that it had been seen by 62 million households in its first 28 days of release, becoming its "biggest scripted limited series to date."