Anya Taylor-Joy Doesn’t Drive. She Performed Her Own Stunts in ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’ Anyway

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Who Is Anya Taylor-Joy?

Actor Anya Taylor-Joy starred in the hit Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit and has appeared in movies such as The Menu and Split. Growing up in Argentina and the United Kingdom, the American-born future star trained as a dancer before dropping out of school to pursue acting at age 16. Her breakthrough performance came in the 2015 horror movie The Witch. Since then, she has received three Golden Globe nominations—winning one for The Queen’s Gambit—and one Emmy nomination, also for the Netflix series. Taylor-Joy plays the titular character in the upcoming sci-fi movie Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in theaters this May.

Quick Facts

FULL NAME: Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy
BORN: April 16, 1996
BIRTHPLACE: Miami, Florida
SPOUSE: Malcolm McRae (2023-present)
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Aries

Early Life: Parents and Ethnicity

Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy was born on April 16, 1996, in Miami. Her parents are Dennis Alan Taylor, a former banker, and Jennifer Marina Joy, a psychologist. Anya is the youngest of six siblings, some of whom are from her father’s first marriage.

Taylor-Joy comes from a multiethnic background. Dennis is Scottish-Argentinian, and Jennifer is Spanish-English but was born and grew up in Zambia. Anya was born while her parents were on vacation in Miami, granting her American citizenship. She also holds British and Argentinian citizenship.

Taylor-Joy, whose first language was Spanish, partially grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina. When she was 6, her family moved to London in search of a less tumultuous political climate. Taylor-Joy refused to speak English for two years, thinking it would force her parents to take her back to Argentina. When it became apparent her plan wouldn’t work, she learned her second language by reading the popular Harry Potter book series by J.K. Rowling. “As lame as it sounds, those characters really were my first friends,” she told TV host Graham Norton.

While attending Hill House in Knightsbridge and the Queen’s Gate School in South Kensington, Taylor-Joy trained as a ballet dancer. She has described herself as “very insecure and deeply unhappy” during this time and admitted to struggling with body image.

In September 2016, she told W magazine she had a very compact head as a child, meaning her eyes were positioned far apart on her face. While this became less prominent as she grew older, she remained self-conscious about her eyes and social media posts related to it. “I didn’t enjoy it and I kind of stopped looking in mirrors for a very long time. I still don’t really spend a lot of time in front of mirrors because I don’t really have to deal with my face. Unfortunately, y’all do,” she said.

Taylor-Joy dropped out of school at age 16, and although she was scouted by and briefly worked as a model for Storm Management, acting remained her desired path.

Movies: Split, The Witch, and The Menu

Beginner’s luck wasn’t in the cards for Taylor-Joy, whose first professional audition was for the 2014 Disney movie Maleficent. She hoped to portray a younger version of Angelina Jolie’s titular character but didn’t get the part. “It was my first experience of, like, rejection, like true rejection,” she later told BuzzFeed Celeb. “Even though I look nothing like [Jolie], but I definitely cried for a very long time after that happened.”

She did begin to earn smaller parts, such as an uncredited role in the 2014 teen flick Vampire Academy and a one-episode appearance in the British TV series Endeavour that same year. Her breakout role in a cult classic scary movie wasn’t far off.

The Witch

Taylor-Joy played a teenage girl named Thomasin in 2015’s The Witch, an atmospheric horror film about a family in Puritanical New England that encounters supernatural forces in the woods near their settlement.

On the same day she was cast in the movie, Taylor-Joy also received an offer to star in a Disney Channel pilot episode. However, she “had this really good feeling” and committed to The Witch instead.

Despite her initial optimism, Taylor-Joy was “devastated” upon watching her performance and thought she would never work in movies again. “It was just the worst feeling of, ‘I have let down the people I love most in the world. I didn’t do it right,’” she told the Awards Chatter podcast. “And I’m quite verbose, I like to talk, I like to communicate. I did not talk, I just cried. I couldn’t handle seeing my face that large.”

Luckily, critics and moviegoers felt differently. The Witch was a financial success, grossing $40 million worldwide against a $4 million budget. Taylor-Joy’s acting career was off and running.

Split, Emma., and The Menu

Off her performance in The Witch, Taylor-Joy appeared in the sci-fi thriller Morgan (2016) and the Netflix movie Barry (2016), based on the early life of former President Barack Obama.

That same year, she played protagonist Casey Cooke in the M. Night Shyamalan thriller Split, also starring James McAvoy. The movie, set in the same universe as Shyamalan’s previous movie Unbreakable, spawned the 2019 sequel Glass, again starring Taylor-Joy and McAvoy, as well as Bruce Willis and Samuel L. Jackson.

Having proven she could act alongside Hollywood heavyweights, Taylor-Joy soon garnered her first major award recognition for 2020’s Emma., based on the Jane Austen novel of the same name. The actor received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Performance by an Actress in a Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy for playing the movie’s namesake, Emma Woodhouse.

Since then, Taylor-Joy has been in high demand, appearing in movies such as Last Night in Soho (2021); The Northman (2022), marking another collaboration with The Witch director Robert Eggers; and Amsterdam (2022).

The most prominent of her recent roles came in the 2022 dark comedy The Menu, about a disillusioned chef (played by Ralph Fiennes) who exacts revenge on his unsuspecting diners. Taylor-Joy earned another Golden Globe nomination for The Menu, as well as the admiration of her co-star. “There are just some times when you feel the truthfulness of the person you’re acting with, and it really helps you. It really raises your game somehow. And she’s got that,” Fiennes said.

Blockbusters: Dune: Part Two and Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga

In 2023, Taylor-Joy lent her voice to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, the second-highest grossing movie of the year that made more than $1 billion at the global box office. In the film, based on the Nintendo video game, she voiced Princess Peach, the fearless leader of the Mushroom Kingdom.

Despite the immense financial success of Super Mario Bros., Taylor-Joy is on pace for an even bigger year in 2024. She started by making a crucial cameo appearance in the science-fiction epic Dune: Part Two, also starring Timothée Chalamet and Zendaya.

Her next major role is starring as the titular character in the post-apocalyptic thriller Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. The prequel to the 2015 hit Mad Max: Fury Road also stars Chris Hemsworth and is scheduled to release in theaters on May 24, 2024.

While spending time in front of a camera was nothing new for Taylor-Joy, driving a souped-up war machine as Furiosa was a learning experience. The actor doesn’t have a driver’s license, and performing stunts for the movie marked her first time behind the wheel of a car. “I can’t parallel-park, I can’t go on the highway. I still don’t have [a license], but I can do that,” she joked with TV host Graham Norton.

TV Shows: Peaky Blinders and The Queen’s Gambit

In addition to her growing list of movie roles, Taylor-Joy has starred in two of the biggest television series of the past decade.

In 2019, she joined the cast of Peaky Blinders, the popular BBC and Netflix gangster drama starring Cillian Murphy. Taylor-Joy appeared as Gina Gray in 11 episodes across Seasons 5 and 6. According to hair and makeup designer Julie Nightingale, the show took inspiration from Old Hollywood stars such as Ginger Rogers and Jean Harlow in creating Taylor-Joy’s distinctive look for the series.

In a less violent but equally thrilling alternative to Peaky Blinders, Taylor-Joy took the lead for The Queen’s Gambit, a limited series about a fictional chess prodigy named Beth Harmon. The show, which debuted during the COVID-19 pandemic in October 2020, was a smash hit. Within the first month, 62 million households watched The Queen’s Gambit, making it Netflix’s most watched scripted limited series to date.

Critics lauded Taylor-Joy’s performance, with the actor winning the 2021 Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Limited Series, Anthology Series, or Motion Picture Made for Television and receiving an Emmy nomination. “I’ve never given so much of myself to a character before,” Taylor-Joy told Variety. “I usually think about a character as so different from me, and I make a real point to make them walk differently, to have a different caliber of voice, to laugh differently, to cry differently. I want them to be their own person. But for Beth, it was the first time that I just thought the only way to tell this accurately is to give bits of myself up.”

Fans clamoring for another season were disappointed to learn in January 2023 that a Tweet from Taylor-Joy referencing a second season was the result of hacking. However, the actor has teased that she is open to the idea of returning for a second part. “It would be silly of me to go, ‘There’s never going to be a second series,’” she told Elle in 2021, “and then I’m 40 and [co-creator Scott Frank’s] like, ‘Yo, how do you feel about this? You want to go back?’”

Elsewhere, Taylor-Joy starred in the 2017 BBC and PBS miniseries The Miniaturist and hosted Saturday Night Live in May 2021.

Husband

Taylor-Joy married musician Malcolm McRae in October 2023 in Venice, Italy. A number of famous friends attended the ceremony, including actors Miles Teller, Nicholas Hoult, Cara Delevingne, and Julia Garner.

Although it’s unclear when they began dating, Taylor-Joy first made reference to McRae as “my partner” in an April 2021 interview with Elle. The two were spotted together in New York City the following month, and McRae all but confirmed their relationship status by October after posting an Instagram photo of the couple holding hands.

According to People, McRae plays guitar and piano and sings in a two-person rock band called More*, formed with former Portugal. The Man member Kane Ritchotte. His relationship with Taylor-Joy is reflected in his music, with McRae writing the song “Really Want to See You Again” only two days after meeting her in 2021.

McRae and Taylor-Joy have the same birthday, April 16, and adopted a cat named Kitsune in May 2022.

Taylor-Joy has kept details of her prior relationships private, though she was previously linked to Irish actor Eoin Macken from 2016 through 2017. “I was not a good dater, and I’m quite glad to not be. I hear stories from my friends, and I’m like, ‘God, I would suck at that,’” she said.

Net Worth

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Taylor-Joy’s total fortune is estimated to be around $7 million.

Quotes

• It’s bizarre that [red carpets are] a huge part of my normal life, but it’s not normal life at all. In which situation do you ever dress yourself to the nines to be photographed by 200 people who are screaming at you? It’s not normal.

• Trying to pick a project that I’m most proud of is like trying to pick between children. Even if you do have a favorite, you’re not supposed to say it!

• I never had any intention of being a method actor, but the more movies I do, the line is getting blurrier and blurrier. I’m finding it harder to disconnect between what is occurring for my [character] and what is occurring for me.

• I was born in Miami, raised between Argentina and London, and my first language is Spanish. So, legally, my ethnicity is fashion week.

• When people shake or cry when they meet you, you just feel really like, “Please don’t do that, it’s really OK!” Like, I’m not scary, and I’m not anything wild and crazy.

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