LOS ANGELES (AP) – In a span of seven months just this year, Anya Taylor-Joy played a British brat intruding on “Emma”, a Russian mutant with teleportation powers in the latest X-Men movie , ”and an American orphan who becomes a chess phenomenon who can checkmate older men when he’s eight in“ The Queen’s Gambit ”.
It’s just beginning.
The 24-year-old has just shot “The Northman” alongside Nicole Kidman, Alexander Skarsgard, Willem Dafoe and Ethan Hawke. In October, Warner Bros. announced that Taylor-Joy will play Furious in the long-awaited prequel to “Mad Max: Fury Road.” Oh, and he’ll have another movie in April: Edgar Wright’s psychological thriller, “Last Night in Soho”.
“When she was little, all she wanted to do was go to Narnia and, you know, fly to Neverland and go to all these amazing places,” Taylor-Joy recently told The Associated Press, which called her one of her advances. Animators of 2020. “And now, when I grow up, I’m like,“ I live in Narnia. This is awesome “.
Taylor-Joy is “the busiest person I’ve ever met,” said Marielle Heller, who plays Taylor Joy’s adoptive mother in “The Queen’s Gambit” and directed “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” and “Can You Forgive Me? ”
“I don’t know how he’s doing so many projects at the same time. It’s really impressive, ”Heller said.
Netflix says “The Queen’s Gambit” was its limited series with the largest screenplay in history and “Emma” received critical and box office acclaim, as well as her big-screen debut as the star of the film. Robert Eggers’ 2015 horror hit “The Witch,” which won Taylor Joy at the Gotham Independent Film Award for Innovative Actor. He has also received praise for his performances in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Split”, the thriller and dark comedy “Thoroughbreds” and the BBC One’s “Peaky Blinders”.
All of that success could have easily passed Taylor-Joy’s head, but Heller said he has managed to stay humble.
“The danger of young people having a professional career sinks when they are very young: they can become a fool. But she hasn’t, “Heller said.” It’s a real joy to work with her. You won’t get so many consecutive roles if you’re not someone you’re good at working with. “
Taylor-Joy is so beloved among those who have run it that they have formed what is almost an adoration club, calling each other and talking about how it goes, said Wilde’s Autumn, who directed Taylor-Joy to “Emma “.
“We share a common bond where we only believe 100% in her and we are very excited to see how our ideas will flourish with her,” Wilde said. “It’s not an empty boat. It is a box of endless secret drawers and corridors ”.
Part of what makes Taylor-Joy so magnetic is her complete lack of narcissism, she said.
“A great photograph makes you want to be there. I think it makes you wish you were there watching his work. That’s because you don’t look in the mirror, you look at the person you’re acting with, I feel like a director as a director, ”de Wilde said.
Taylor-Joy was born in Miami and grew up largely in Argentina. She only spoke Spanish when her parents moved her to England, to her and her five siblings, where Taylor-Joy struggled to adapt and learn English.
Although she has escaped the harassment she struggled with at the time, she is still learning to be kind to herself.
“A friend of mine once said to me,‘ You would never talk to your friends the way you talk about yourself, ’which was huge,” he said. “It is such a difficult journey for each individual to become friends with himself. There are people who are born and only have it and I applaud these people. I was not one of them.
While he says his soaring fame “can be a little intense”, the trip has been “a nice process”.
“I have a lot of energy, and I think it requires this race and the hours of this race, I get tired enough to be healthy, which I appreciate,” he said.
“Making films is difficult. Whatever film is made, it is a miracle that that film could be witnessed by other people. The fact that he even got there is a childish miracle, and working with so many talented people and so many different people to make it a reality and come to life, is strangely affirmative of life. It just makes me very happy. “