Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy Biography: The Enigmatic Talent

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

For playing Emma Woodhouse in the period drama Emma (2020), Taylor-Joy received her first Golden Globe Award nomination. She then earned international recognition for playing Beth Harmon in the Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit (2020), winning a Golden Globe and SAG Award, and being nominated for a Primetime Emmy Award. She has since appeared in the horror film Last Night in Soho (2021), the action films The Northman (2022), Margot / Erin in the black comedy film The Menu (2022), Princess Peach in the animated film The Super Mario Bros. Movie (2023), and Imperator Furiosa in the apocalyptic film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024).

Early life (Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy Biography)

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.

Taylor-Joy lived with her family in Buenos Aires and attended Northlands School until the age of six, when the family relocated to the Victoria area of London. She is fluent in both 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 (Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy Biography)

2013–2019: Early work and breakthrough

Taylor-Joy was removed from the final cut of her first acting role as a background ‘Feeder Girl’ in the 2014 fantasy comedy-horror Vampire Academy, with her role left uncredited. 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.

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”.

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 success

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.” 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’s portrayal won her 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 and garnered her a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited or Anthology Series or Movie.

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.

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.

Taylor-Joy began 2024 with a cameo role as Alia Atreides in Denis Villeneuve’s Dune: Part Two, a casting that was initially kept secret and was not publicly announced until she walked the red carpet at the film’s London premiere.  She next starred as the titular character in George Miller’s action film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, which served as a prequel to the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road. Taylor Joy declared the film to have been an unpleasant working endeavor, stating: “I’ve never been more alone than making that movie … I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”

She will next star opposite Miles Teller in Scott Derrickson’s romantic action film The Gorge.

Personal life (Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy Biography)

Taylor-Joy began a relationship with American musician Malcolm McRae, frontman of the rock band More, in 2021. They married in a private ceremony on 1 April 2022 in New Orleans. They held a second, public wedding during the last weekend of September 2023 at the Palazzo Pisani Moretta in Venice, Italy.

Public image

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.

She has been an ambassador for brands including Viktor & Rolf, Tiffany & Co. Dior’s fashion and makeup, and Jaeger-LeCoultre.

Filmography (Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy Biography)

Film

Television

Music videos

Awards and nominations (Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy Biography)

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. The Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Miniseries or Television Movie in 2021.

Explanatory notes