Anya Taylor Joy | Before They Were Famous | The Queen's Gambit Actress Biography

My biggest irrational fear, revolving doors. Revolving doors have always freaked me out and I'm not even claustrophobic. It's just the speed that it's going around and I'm consistently worried that I'm not going to make it so it's going to cut me in half or something. Before Anya Taylor-Joy would star in the most watched scripted limited series ever on Netflix with a record-breaking 62 million households in its first 28 days. Before Anya Taylor-Joy would tell Harper's Bazaar that she thinks she's weird looking 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. Before Anya Taylor-Joy would have over 2.8 million followers on Instagram at the time of this recording, Anya Taylor-Joy, born in Miami, Florida, just launched to superstardom after being in over 62 million households thanks to her hit miniseries The Queen's Gambit on Netflix. She rose to prominence with her lead role in The Witch, which she won three awards for including Breakthrough Actor, Best Female Newcomer, and Best Actress, as well as multiple nominations. In 2017, she gained further recognition for her starring role in M. Night Shyamalan's films Split and Glass in 2019 as Casey Cook. Another movie that will make you say, oh my god, she's in that too, is in The New Mutants as Magic, as well as Emma and Peaky Blinders, among others. She just changes up her hair color a lot, so it looks like it's not the same person. Looking back on her earlier life, she moved to Buenos Aires as an infant and lived there until she was 6, with her first language being Spanish, then her family moved to London. The move proved to be incredibly traumatic for her, and she refused to speak English for two whole years, believing that this would force her parents to move back to Argentina. I only learned English when I was 8 because I was convinced that if I didn't speak the language in England that I would have to go home, but that didn't work out. At the age of 14, she moved to the States, but would split her time between New York and England. At 16, she was scouted by a modeling agent in London, and around this time is when she was signed with an acting agent. This is where the story truly begins. What's going on guys? It's your girl Azealia Hart here for you on Before They Were Famous, documenting the life of Anya Taylor-Joy prior to fame. We've done videos similar to Anya, so be sure to check those out when you're finished watching this one. In the meantime, let me know in the comments down below who you want to see a video on. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at BeforeTheyWereFamous, and feel free to follow me too at AzealiaZoey. Let's get into this story, and I'll see you after the intro. Anya Josephine Marie Taylor-Joy is the youngest of six children. Her mother was born and raised in Zambia, and is a psychologist of British and Spanish descent. Her father, Scottish and Argentine, was an international banker turned professional motor boat racer. She moved around quite a bit and attended the preparatory school Hill House in Kensington, which notes Prince Charles and Lily Allen as alumni, before attending the Northland School in Argentina and Queensgate School in London, where she participated in plays. Her first role was in the play Perkin and the Pastry Cook as a boy, which is something she looks forward to doing again, playing the role of a boy that is. As I mentioned earlier, her first language was Spanish, and she's still fluent in the language today, but she refused to learn or speak English when she moved to London. Eventually, of course, she gave in, and she learned with the help of the most famous British character I think there is, Harry Potter. My uncle taught me to read and to speak at the same time with the Harry Potter books. I was either casting spells continuously or using very annoying words, like I was such a precocious, annoying little kid. It's like, Mommy, I clean the dishes meticulously, you know, that kind of thing. Looking back now, she appreciated the move to London because it exposed her to opportunities that she wouldn't have had if she stayed in Argentina. Growing up, she loved to dance and went to ballet school, but with her family constantly moving, it became an obstacle to keep up, but one passion that persisted was acting. As a child, she was even the designated movie selector for the family. She told W Magazine, I'd go on my little scooter every day and pick out the movies and take them home, and it was my responsibility and my job, and I couldn't really read, so I just picked the boxes based on what they looked like. For as long as she remembers, she knew she was going to perform. At the age of three, she remembers sitting in a booster seat in Argentina, and she heard the song, Staying Alive, and she said to herself, whoa, what is this? And that was her first memory of hearing really good music and wanting to dance. When she was young, she would constantly make up stories or tell outrageous lies. She would always be dancing, too, and just knew that she needed to express herself in a creative way. She started modeling after being scouted in London by the founder of Storm Model Management, Sarah Dukas, at the age of 16. But she almost let that opportunity slip away because she thought she was being stalked. She was walking her dog in high heels because she had a party to attend the next day and wanted to practice, when she noticed a car following her. She did what any woman would do, she picked up her dog and ran away. But then she heard someone calling from the car. Sarah Dukas then gave her her card and also warned her to never stop again for a stranger calling her over to their car. And this black car started following me. So I freaked out, picked up my dog and ran. And then a guy stuck his head out the window and said, if you stop, you won't regret it. Which is like every horror movie ever. I did stop and it was the head of a modeling agency and it all worked out. But I do not suggest that people stop if a car is following you. If you're like, just keep running. Her modeling career launched when she was 17 years old and she admitted to being, and I quote, frightened by it because she wasn't accustomed to wearing dresses. She told W Magazine, During her first fitting, she just didn't feel like herself and also couldn't wrap her head around the idea of looking beautiful. But now she loves dressing up. When she's modeling though, Anya considers it a sort of out of body experience, like a puppy looking at itself in the mirror. She can't connect with the person in the pictures, even though it's her. She thinks modeling is projecting an ideal. Anyway, she's always looked at modeling as her vehicle to the bigger picture of acting. In 2014, at the age of 17, going on 18, she decided to finally try her hand at acting and dropped out of school. She wrote a 5-page long essay to her parents, basically saying, When it came to school though, Anya said she never got along with people her own age anyway and that they just didn't get her. Part of her decision to leave school was influenced by the fact that she was bullied because of her eyes, which are set a little further apart than most people. One day, someone tagged her in a picture of a fish on Facebook and said that that's what she looked like because the eyes were on the sides of its head. From there, she became extremely self-conscious and started to avoid mirrors. She told The Sun, The beauty of being in your own skin is that you don't have to look at your own face. That's so sad, especially because she's so beautiful. Her first small acting gang was in a teen drama called Vampire Academy with a role so small that she wasn't even listed in the credits. But she went on to act in a few TV series like Endeavor as a detective, Viking Quest and Gold Skin. Her real opportunity though came when she was in a shoot with the actors of Downton Abbey where she became fast friends with actor Alan Leitch and she shared her acting ambitions with him. He ended up introducing her to an acting agent who helped her book her breakout role in The Witch. The 2015 film is what really got the world's attention and his audition tape was the first one that Robert Eggers, writer-director of The Witch, saw and then he watched a thousand other audition tapes and he just couldn't believe it was that easy to find his leading lady. She said, And so when I walked in, I was all over the place and I was like, I am pretty much having a panic attack, do you still want me to do this? Of course he said yes. After her performance in The Witch where she received rave reviews, she starred in another horror thriller called Morgan that did terribly, both by critics, the box office and audiences. In 2016 she went on to star in Split and she snagged the leading role in the biopic about Barack Obama, Fairy. She played Charlotte Bowman, an amalgamation of Obama's three white girlfriends in college and she celebrated her 20th birthday on the set of the movie as well. At midnight she just finished her first sex scene and it made her feel like an adult. I slept with the president on my birthday. I could pick certain things from each of the women and put that into her and she's wonderful, she's really, really cool. In 2017 she was nominated for a BAFTA in the Best Rising Star category and then went on In an interview with M. Night Shyamalan, she said It doesn't matter where it is in the world or who I'm making the movie with, that's the closest thing that I've got to a sense of placement. So I guess acting was a way of finding a home, if that makes sense. When Anya started on Split, there was a weekend gap between filming and she left her script in M. Night Shyamalan's office and when she came back on Monday, M. Night ripped into her because he was so disappointed and thought she wasn't taking the role seriously. She said from that moment she told herself she really wanted to prove herself to him and that she was going to be the most dedicated actress that he'd ever worked with and she did just that. On working with Anya, M. Night Shyamalan told her that she is a very unusual actor. He said Fast forward to 2020, Anya has been absolutely killing it, first with her role in Queen's Gambit as a chess aficionado. Did you know that Anya knew basically nothing about the game? She told Entertainment Weekly it was more important to me to understand the theory of chess. She said Then in her lead role in Emma as Emma. This is not Anya's first leading role in a movie either, but she still said that she doesn't believe she's beautiful enough to star in films. She's received critical acclaim for both The Witch and Jane Austen's adaptation of Emma, as well as her performance in The Queen's Gambit, but she doesn't think that she meets Hollywood's so-called beauty standards required for the big screen. She even had a breakdown on the set of Emma because she thought to herself, I am the first ugly Emma and I can't do this because the first line in the movie says, I am handsome, clever and rich. Hopefully though she grows out of that because she's obviously like absolutely stunning and incredibly talented. As to where Anya Taylor-Joy goes from here, well, that's a story for another time and another video. After all, this is Before They Were Famous, so what did you think of Anya's story? Comment down below and let me know. Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Before They Were Famous and follow me too at Azalea Zoe and I'll see you in the next video.