Getting famous during a pandemic. "Starring in "The Witch" and "The Queen's Gambit." Anya Taylor-Joy has taken over Hollywood and here's why!
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00:00Getting famous during a pandemic, starring in The Witch and The Queen's Gambit,
00:04Anya Taylor-Joy has taken over Hollywood, and here's why.
00:08Anya Taylor-Joy didn't have the easiest childhood. While she did great in school,
00:12thriving in drama classes, English, and the classics, Taylor-Joy told The Evening Standard
00:17in 2017,
00:18"[The kids just didn't understand me in any shape or form, and I was really badly bullied.
00:22I used to get locked in lockers, you know, barred from classrooms, not invited to things.
00:26It wasn't pleasant."
00:27Considering why this hurt so much as a child, Taylor-Joy added,
00:31"[We're social creatures, and we don't do well when we're not accepted,
00:34or when we feel like we don't belong anywhere.]
00:36While it's unfortunate that Taylor-Joy had to go through this as a child,
00:39she reflected as an adult that the loneliness of her childhood made her understand the
00:43character of Beth Harmon in The Queen's Gambit better. This allowed the star to
00:47transform childhood tragedy into character relatability. She said to Style in March 2021,
00:52I saw a lot of parallels between the two of us. Beth is an inherently lonely person,
00:57and that was something I definitely struggled with growing up. She's desperately looking for
01:01a place where she fits in and where she feels like she can contribute something.
01:04For her, that's chess, and for me, it's acting."
01:09With such an unusual childhood, filled with travel and change,
01:14Anya Taylor-Joy seems comfortable uprooting her life and making big moves.
01:18While speaking with The Evening Standard, she explained how she used her savings to
01:22move to New York at 14, before deciding to quit school two years later to focus on acting.
01:27Noting that her family was scared for her, she said,
01:29All of my brothers and sisters called me to tell me I was ruining my life. I cried hysterically."
01:34Taylor-Joy added that being the youngest of six kids gave her a preternatural confidence
01:39that she used to her advantage. She told The Evening Standard,
01:42I think because my siblings are so much older than me, I grew up around adults,
01:45and I never thought of myself as a child. My parents raised me as if they always trusted me.
01:50She rose to this trust, and her huge risk paid off when she was discovered.
01:55Anya Taylor-Joy is now a major Hollywood player. She's played Gina Gray in the TV series Peaky
02:00Blinders and Emma Woodhouse in the 2019 adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. She was
02:05also the character of Ileana Rasputin in the 2020 film The New Mutants.
02:09But her big Hollywood breakthrough came when she nabbed the role of Thomasson in the 2015 film The
02:14Witch. Taylor-Joy described when she first watched herself in the movie to The Evening Standard,
02:19saying,
02:19"...I saw myself on screen for the first time, and I was terrified. I was convinced I would
02:23never act again. I never actually figured that I couldn't act."
02:27Of course, this proved to be very far from the truth,
02:29and Taylor-Joy has gone on to play a whole panoply of characters. She said at the 2020
02:34Golden Globes,
02:35Each character is such a gift. Each one has been so individual and has had such a different way
02:39of arriving. There's a moment where everything clicks, and just suddenly, you are that person.
02:44But I couldn't say that one is more rewarding or more taxing,
02:47because I put all of myself into each one of them."
02:49While The Witch might have been her big breakthrough,
02:51it was The Queen's Gambit that put Anya Taylor-Joy on the map in a global way.
02:56The series earned her a Golden Globe in 2021, which also marked her first major award. In fact,
03:01Taylor-Joy became the first Latina to win in the category of Best Actress in a Limited Series,
03:06Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television, according to Variety.
03:10Ironically for Anya Taylor-Joy, the moment she skyrocketed to fame was during the COVID-19
03:16pandemic. It sounds counterintuitive, but everyone was cooped up at home,
03:19and what became an instant favorite on Netflix? The Queen's Gambit.
03:23Everyone wanted to know who brought the wide-eyed Beth Harmon to life.
03:26All of this happened during lockdown, so the craziest thing was, I was just kind of in my house."
03:32While the pandemic made her an international sensation,
03:34it was also a transformative time for Taylor-Joy. She told Tatler that she was filming The Northman
03:39when everything shut down, and she had to go stay at her home in London and face a
03:43completely different reality from the one she had previously known. She said,
03:47"[I do think there's a specific period of time between the ages of 18 and 25 when you are so
03:52malleable, and because I was pouring so much energy into understanding my characters,
03:56I was like a vase being filled with different colored liquids and I had no concept of who I was."
04:01She said that the solitude and slowness allowed her to carve out personal time,
04:04something she hadn't had in a long time.
04:07Anya Taylor-Joy has hit the jackpot with TV and film gigs, but she still has some
04:11dreams on her horizon — namely, in people she wants to work with and what she wants to do.
04:16At the 2020 Golden Globes, Taylor-Joy talked about working on Spanish-language projects.
04:20She shared,
04:21"[I have always wanted to work with Guillermo del Toro. I feel his
04:24relationship with the supernatural is very much like mine. He understands my
04:28brain and my heart very well. So I would love to work with him. I am just waiting for the
04:32right project. It needs to be something special because it's a very special part of my life,
04:36it's a very special part of my soul. Spanish is my first language."
04:40But Taylor-Joy has other dream collaborations. In 2016, she told The Hollywood Reporter,
04:45"[I would love to work with Quentin Tarantino. I'd love to work with the
04:48Coen brothers and Steven Spielberg. E.T. was big for me."
04:51If her past is any pattern to base projections,
04:54it looks like Taylor-Joy will get everything she wants — and will be here to watch it.
04:58While most actors have a hard time finding work, Anya Taylor-Joy had the opposite problem.
05:03She's had so much work that she's needed to slow down. For instance,
05:06she had one day off between filming Emma and Last Night in Soho.
05:10Taylor-Joy told Tattler how she managed it and why this wasn't working. She explained,
05:14"[I survived on diet Coke, cigarettes, and coffee, and by the end of it I was like,
05:18I need to eat a vegetable."
05:20Taylor-Joy admitted that it can sometimes create a feeling of missing out, saying,
05:24"[It can be difficult when you're young to not feel guilty about not doing things that
05:27other 25-year-olds are doing, and that can be a bit of a head f-----.]
05:31She's been so busy that while filming Peaky Blinders,
05:33Taylor-Joy wasn't even able to be in the scenes with her co-stars.
05:36She was filming Amsterdam in Los Angeles when Finn Cole was in England. She told The Hollywood
05:41Reporter,
05:41"...and so we actually did a lot of our scenes not together. It was just me acting to empty space
05:46and watching a scene that Finn had done and trying to do my reaction based off of that,
05:50which was a really interesting way of working."
05:52On The Late Late Show with James Corden, Taylor-Joy spoke about exhaustion.
05:56"...I haven't slept since I was seven."
05:58She spoke in praise of white noise apps and confessed to loving whale sounds to fall asleep.
06:03After that grueling schedule, if whale sounds work, then whales it is!
06:07Part of becoming an A-lister meant that Anya Taylor-Joy began dealing with paparazzi and
06:11approaching strangers. In some cases, these encounters were harmless, while others have
06:16been scary. She told Tatler,
06:18"...most people are sweet and kind and just want to have a conversation, and I love that."
06:22Unfortunately, not all of her encounters have led to pleasant exchanges, saying,
06:26"...well, there are other times when you're just one person facing off against 20,
06:29and that's just physically not safe. It can be very frightening when there
06:33are whole bunches of men with cameras attached to their faces running after you down the street."
06:37She had a particularly bad experience in New York, which left her in tears,
06:41but after taking a pause, she came up with an idea, as she explained,
06:44"...the next morning I went out and I said,
06:46Hello, my name is Anya. Let's lower down the camera and let's meet. I am not prey.
06:51I don't want to run."
06:52Her goal was to get the engagement to a place where they could do their job without her feeling
06:56scared, but the happy fans are her favorite part. On The Graham Norton Show, Taylor-Joy said that
07:01the Queen's Gambit brought forward a delightful mix-match of fans, especially the disparity
07:06between ages.
07:07"...you have, like, really little kids that love it, and then you have, like,
07:1087-year-old people that are like, Beth! And I love that."
07:14Chess seems to bring everyone together.
07:16One of the more curious projects that Anya Taylor-Joy has ever worked on was the 2022
07:21film The Menu, starring alongside Ralph Fiennes, Hong Chao, and Nicholas Holt.
07:25The curious horror movie takes place at an exclusive restaurant on a tiny island,
07:30so the guests are trapped and at the mercy of Fiennes' character, celebrity chef Julian Slowick.
07:35It sounds tame enough, but the film is dazzling in its unexpected plot direction,
07:39and Taylor-Joy is a marvel as Margot. In a breakdown of the scenes with Vanity Fair,
07:44Taylor-Joy raved about how much she loved her character and the movie itself. She said,
07:49"...I love Margot very, very much,
07:51because she is the character that I've played that's the most comfortable in their skin.
07:54I've never been a particularly passive-aggressive person,
07:57and I deeply enjoyed being passive-aggressive."
08:00Taylor-Joy also spoke about the delight of working with legend Fiennes,
08:03telling The Hollywood Reporter,
08:05"...He's just beautiful in every way. He's such a talented actor in that whatever he
08:09wants to transmute onto the screen, he will achieve it in spades. Maybe it was because
08:13of the characters we were playing or the relationship that we have, but I just find
08:17him deeply comforting. I feel very comfortable and taken care of when I'm with Rafe."
08:21She said that at their core, both of their characters were outsiders,
08:24and it created a bond while filming.
08:27Anya Taylor-Joy found love in a fellow reader. She began dating musician and actor Malcolm McRae
08:32in May 2021, per People, and they became really official when they kissed in public at the
08:37Northman premiere. During an interview with British Vogue, Taylor-Joy discussed their
08:41relationship — a very literary one, at that. She said,
08:44"...I said to my partner the other day that he was my hobby. I see reading as something
08:48that I have to do."
08:49The interviewer asked how McRae reacted to that statement. Taylor-Joy clarified,
08:54"...he loved it because he's the same. I've finally found someone who will happily sit
08:57in silence with me reading. We're basically 80 years old and seven at the same time,
09:02and it works really well."
09:03On his Instagram page in March 2022, he posted a song and added the caption,
09:08"...I wrote this song for Anya two days after meeting her. It's called
09:12Really Want to See You Again."
09:13If that's not romantic, we don't know what is. The lyrics go,
09:17"...I think we're alike in ways that I can't quite explain right, but I might,
09:21could, with some time. If ever we were in the same place. I want what's right,
09:25but I want without warning now and I think we're wanting something the same."
09:29So, music was obviously the magic touch.