The queen of chess and horror: everything about Ana Taylor-Joy - an actress with a hypnotic gaze
'10.12.2020'
Source: Mail.ru
Everything you need to know about the young horror star who successfully broke out of this genre and made everyone love chess, and at the same time fascinated modern cinema, says Mail.ru.
Argentine Blood and English by Harry Potter
Anya Taylor-Joy was born in the United States into a family of classic "citizens of the world." Her mother, a psychologist, is half Spanish, half British; father - a Princeton graduate, banker, later retrained as a sea racer, has Argentine and Scottish roots. Anya became their sixth child, and soon after her birth, the family moved to Argentina. Spanish became the mother tongue of the future actress.
After moving to London at the age of six, Anya refused to study English for two more years in the hope of returning to Latin America. When she was eight, her uncle taught her to speak and read English through the Harry Potter books.
“I’m too British to be Argentine, and too Argentine to be British,” 24-year-old Anya describes herself in this way and specifies that her sense of humor is English and her temperament is Argentine.
Dropped out of school for an acting career
Anya, as the daughter of a former banker, received a prestigious education. As a junior, she attended the Hill House School of London, where Prince Charles himself once studied, and as a high school student, Queen's Gate School, where his wife Camilla is a graduate. However, Anya was not very interested in academic sciences, and at the age of 16 she dropped out of school to become an actress. Then the girl signed her first contract with a modeling agency, and soon she moved to New York and acquired a personal agent.
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Failed auditions for the role of young Maleficent
Anya failed her first significant audition. These were auditions for the role of the heroine Angelina Jolie in her youth - in the fairy tale "Maleficent" (as a result, she was played by Ella Pernell). Taylor-Joy then, by her own admission, "wept all her eyes":
“This was my very first experience of refusal, the very real refusal. And it was Disney, which to me meant "Oh my God, Disney itself." And although I am not at all like Angelina Jolie, I still cried for a very long time, ”- Anya Taylor-Joy recalls.
New scream queen
However, a year after this failure, Taylor-Joy was waiting for a breakthrough - the horror film by Robert Eggers "The Witch", in which the actress played the main character Thomasin. A dark, paranoid tale about New England Puritans conquered Sundance and made it into all sorts of ratings for the best horror movies. Anya, with her huge alien eyes, was immediately proclaimed the new "scream queen".
She reinforced this status with the next sci-fi horror film Morgan (Anya played an evil human hybrid) and the psychological thriller Split with James McAvoy. Then there were the sinister "Thoroughbreds" (one of the last films with Anton Yelchin, Joy got the role of the sociopathic Lily, who decided to kill her stepfather), the gloomy "Abode of Shadows" and, of course, "Glass", where Anya again entered the image of a maniac who had survived with 24-person Casey.
Not just a horror girl
Despite the mystical facial expression that horror directors love to exploit, Anya was able to go beyond the role of an actress of the same genre. At first, as befits a rising star, she starred in the film adaptation of the comic book. In Anya's case, these were New Mutants, in which she played Ulyana Rasputina, or Magic, one of the few Russian Marvel characters. At the same time, the actress tried herself in costume dramas: she starred in the fifth season of Peaky Blinders, played the daughter of Marie Curie in the biographical film Dangerous Element. And in 2020, a new adaptation of Jane Austen's classic novel "Emma" was released, where Anya shone in the image of a wayward pimp.
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Go by horse
But, of course, Taylor-Joy's most iconic project today is not horror at all, but the Netflix dramatic miniseries Queen's Move, which had a wild success this fall and became the most watched in its category in the history of the platform. Anya plays the brilliant chess player Beth Harmon (USSR, Alexander Alekhin and vodka with tranquilizers are included). The actress admits that she was always drawn to the sixties, since "people then really changed the world."
“Beth in a strange way falls out of this time - that's what's interesting about her. Women do not yet have equal rights with men, but she does not see this. She realizes her genius, but at the same time does not understand why someone can consider her second-rate just because she is a girl, ”says Anya Taylor-Joy about her heroine.
In general, "Queen's Move", although it took the viewer to another era, turned out to be extremely topical, and at times increased world sales of chess and increased interest in this intellectual game. And at the same time he strengthened the beautiful Anya in the status of a real world movie star.
Charlize Theron will move
Taking into account the last picture in the filmography of Taylor-Joy added big promising projects: for example, it was recently announced that she was approved for the role of young Furiosa in the prequel "Mad Max", dedicated to the story of this heroine.
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At first, director George Miller considered the option of rejuvenating Charlize Theron with the help of graphic technologies, but then he abandoned this idea (which, by the way, broke the heart of Theron herself). The plot of the future picture is kept secret, but, perhaps, it will be based on comics, which means that we will be shown the story of Furiosa's abduction from a matriarchal society. Anya promised not to imitate Charlize in any way:
“I am in love with Furiosa, created by Charlize. She has done an incredible job. I can't even think of taking her place. My character will be completely different, it cannot be otherwise, ”- says the actress.
Among other expected projects with the participation of the actress is the large-scale historical saga "Northerner" about the Icelandic Vikings. It is filmed, by the way, by the same Robert Eggers, who opened the way for Anya to big cinema with his debut horror film "The Witch" (he is also the author of another sensational horror - "Lighthouse" with Robert Pattinson). Anya's company in the new film will include Nicole Kidman, Alexander and Bill Skarsgard, as well as Willem Dafoe. It seems that after such a joint shooting with Angelina Jolie, 24-year-old Ana Taylor-Joy, you can no longer worry about it.
