Anya Taylor-Joy

Anya-Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy is an actor whose screen career moved unusually quickly from art-house horror breakout to international stardom. Born in Miami on 16 April 1996 and raised between Argentina and Britain, she has often been described as a multilingual, transatlantic performer whose background helped shape a career split between American, British, and international productions. Before acting became her profession, she studied ballet and modeled, then began taking television and film roles in the mid-2010s.

Taylor-Joy's major breakthrough came with Robert Eggers's period horror film The Witch, released after its Sundance premiere and centered on a Puritan family in 17th-century New England. As Thomasin, she carried much of the film's tension through a restrained performance that made her a new name in genre cinema. The role led to further high-profile work in thrillers and horror-adjacent projects, including M. Night Shyamalan's Split and Glass, the black comedy Thoroughbreds, Luke Scott's Morgan, and the Barack Obama college-years drama Barry. These early roles established her as a performer comfortable with stylized material, psychological unease, and characters who keep much of their inner life below the surface.

Her profile widened again in 2020. She played Emma Woodhouse in Autumn de Wilde's film adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma., giving a comic, self-aware performance that brought her a Golden Globe nomination. The same year, she starred as chess prodigy Beth Harmon in the Netflix limited series The Queen's Gambit. The series became a major streaming success, and Taylor-Joy's performance won the Golden Globe for best actress in a limited series or television film and the Screen Actors Guild Award for female actor in a television movie or limited series; she was also nominated for a Primetime Emmy. Beth Harmon became her defining television role, combining precision, vulnerability, and star presence in a story about talent, addiction, isolation, and discipline.