FLM.RED

ANYA
TAYLOR-JOY

อันยา เทย์เลอร์-จอย

Reading the room, changing the rules

From the isolation of The Witch to Emma’s social calculations, Beth Harmon’s chessboard and Furiosa’s wasteland.

16 April 1996Miami, Florida, United States

What a character sees before she speaks

Anya Taylor-Joy was born in Miami, Florida, on 16 April 1996 and grew up in Argentina and the United Kingdom. The Witch (2015), directed by Robert Eggers, became an important early showcase for her screen work. FLM.RED’s reading begins with the film’s atmosphere of scrutiny: a young person is watched, judged and asked to account for herself. Looking at the pauses around an answer, rather than only at the answer, offers a way to follow the pressure within a scene.

Emma. (2020) gave her the title role in Autumn de Wilde’s adaptation of Jane Austen. Emma Woodhouse occupies a privileged place in her community and attempts to arrange other people’s relationships. For FLM.RED, the pleasure of watching Taylor-Joy here comes from the possibility that confidence and understanding may be moving at different speeds. A neatly delivered remark can expose a mistaken assumption; an encounter that seems comfortably managed can become embarrassing. The performance invites attention to manners as something a character actively uses.

In the Netflix limited series The Queen’s Gambit (2020), she played Beth Harmon, whose talent for chess develops alongside addiction and isolation. Her performance won the Golden Globe for a limited-series or television-film actress in 2021 and received an Emmy nomination that year. The distinction matters: the acting Emmy was a nomination. FLM.RED is interested in how the series gives thinking a visible rhythm, allowing a glance at the board or an opponent to carry part of the drama before anyone explains a move.

The Menu (2022) brought another Golden Globe nomination, followed by the title role in George Miller’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024). Moving from tightly regulated social settings to the wasteland changes the scale of the action. In FLM.RED’s view, it also changes what we are watching for: a decision can be registered through where a character looks, when she waits and how she crosses a dangerous space. The films listed below are those currently linked to Taylor-Joy in FLM.RED, rather than a complete filmography or television catalogue.