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Quick question that Anya Taylor-Joy and I are dying to know the answer to: Who, in their perverted wisdom, was the first person to wear red lipstick? Which God-fearing person thought, You know what would be cool? If we painted our mouths bright red — really dialed up the pigment 5,000 percent so that you could see our lips from a great distance!
Cursory Internet searches tell me that it could have been the ancient Sumerians, or the Egyptians, or the Romans, but none of this is satisfying enough. Was it for glamour? Intrigue? Sex? A really good going-out look?
“Dude, I think about that stuff all the time!” Taylor-Joy says breathlessly. We are just wrapping up our interview when we stumble upon the topic we both want to talk about forever. “The ‘first people’ question gets me. Who was the first person to decide that pasta would be fun if it was tubular? And coated in butter? That person’s a genius. Who cut up an avocado and was like, I’m going to eat this green stuff on the inside?”
I wonder aloud: Who decided eyelids should be blue? She laughs. “I think we should bring blue eye shadow back.” She is kidding — and the beauty director of this magazine later informs me that it is already back, so her point is actually moot.
But Taylor-Joy suggests it in a kind of conspiratorial way that is partly whimsical and partly illicit, and in that moment I think, Absolutely, let’s do this new thing you just thought of. This is a woman who only started acting in movies four years ago (at age 18), whose second film was a critical hit (The Witch), whose fifth was a financial success and a critical hit (M. Night Shyamalan’s Split), and whose Marvel movie debuts next year (it’s X-Men, The New Mutants, and she gets top billing). That last one just might catapult her into the celebrity stratosphere, which is both exhilarating and anxiety-inducing for her. Now, in the period before her star crystallizes, she can do anything she wants.
   
Source: Allure
Universal impressed the nation’s exhibitors Wednesday with the first footage of M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller “Glass,” starring Samuel L. Jackson, Bruce Willis, James McAvoy and Sarah Paulson.
Shyamalan told the audience at CinemaCon at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas that “Glass” is the “first truly grounded comic book movie.”
Jackson added, “It’s about time I got the title role in my own motherf—ing movie.”
All four stars appeared on the stage, and the footage set up Paulson as a psychologist dealing with the three other characters, who she notes all believe that they are superheroes. What followed was a series of scenes with the characters interacting with each other — with Willis’ character attempting to stop an apocalyptic outcome.
“Glass” brings together the narratives of Shyamalan’s “Unbreakable,” which was released in 2000 through Disney, and last year’s “Split,” from Universal. Shyamalan is self-financing. Universal, Blumhouse and Shyamalan first unveiled plans for “Glass” last year.
From “Unbreakable,” Willis returns as David Dunn and Jackson is back as Elijah Price, best known by his pseudonym Mr. Glass. Joining from “Split” are McAvoy, reprising his role as Kevin Wendell Crumb and the multiple identities who reside within, and Anya Taylor-Joy, the only captive to survive an encounter with McAvoy’s the Beast.
Universal will handle domestic distribution, while Buena Vista International is on board for international territories. “Glass” opens domestically on Jan. 18.
Source: Variety
When Anya Taylor-Joy first read the script for Thoroughbreds, she knew she had to play the lead role of Lily in the film written and directed by Corey Finley. “I heard Lily so, so clearly,” Taylor-Joy says. “It was clear Corey and I wanted to make the same movie.” Shot in a Massachusetts suburb in just 22 days, the comedic thriller follows Lily, a straight-A student who reconnects with her childhood friend Amanda (Olivia Cooke) when her mother hires Lily to tutor her. “They have this toxic, bizarre female friendship,” Joy says of the characters, who start plotting the death of Lily’s overly harsh stepfather. The film also stars the late Anton Yelchin, who, in his final performance, plays a drug dealer in his late 20s. Here, Taylor-Joy talks about her offscreen chemistry with her costars, and how she prepped for her darkest role yet.
How did you end up signing on for this role?
It was the first script where I immediately called my agent and was like, “How do I meet [the director]?” I was desperate to be part of the project. I knew Olivia was attached, but I didn’t know to which character. I only had eyes for Lily. After that, Corey and I met up for coffee and really vibed, and it came together really quickly. A day after I finished Barry, I started shooting Thoroughbreds.
What about Lily spoke to you immediately?
I think I’m very instinctive about my characters. When I hear their voice, or when I feel I belong to them or they belong to me, it’s a kind of a tangible feeling. From a performance point of view, I was very intrigued by the idea of having to work from the outside in, rather than the inside out. When you first meet Lily, she is this very pristine, porcelain individual who is presenting a front to the world. She is trying to achieve this Instagram-level of perfection that isn’t real. So I was really intrigued by the idea of presenting people with this very well put together facade, but as the movie went on, stripping away the moral insulation levels and seeing the messy, chaotic, raging person beneath.
Does Instagram-level perfection annoy you?
Instagram in its best light is a fun way of keeping up with your friends and expressing yourself. In a negative way, it’s presenting the best version of yourself at all times that only needs to exist within a 30-second clip or image. So it doesn’t show you a real person who has ups and downs. Especially in regard to Lily—she’s so angry she can’t achieve that. She can’t be as perfect as these images. It breeds a really horrible sense of insecurity that can drive her to do some pretty dark things and harbor dark feelings within.
Have you ever played a character as dark as her before?
No, most of my characters, despite having a lot going on underneath, have been reacting to external circumstances. While I think Lily, not only is she a product of this Instagram society and extreme wealth, she’s just reacting to her darker urges and how the urges are manifesting. And having that kernel of evil within you, growing, festering, it was something I was intrigued by as a performer. My characters are real people for me, so as we were shooting the movie I was defending Lily the whole time. When crew members were like, “God, she’s such a bitch,” I’d be like, “No! You have no idea where she’s coming from, you don’t understand. She’s completely justified.” It was only after filming finished and I started leaving her behind that I realized I’d been inhabiting a very toxic skin for a month.
In what ways did you inhabit her? Did you start making Lily-like choices on set and in real life?
I’m so glad I’m not a method actor, but even so, I firmly subscribe to the idea that while I’m still always Anya, I’m living with Lily for that month. Certain personality traits will come through. With every character I play, it’s like having a different roommate for a time, I adapt to allow her to fit inside myself. For Lily, that meant that for my friends and family I dropped off the face of the earth because Lily does not have a support network. To be able to inhabit that skin every day, I felt like I couldn’t have my own support group taking care of me. I didn’t want people to see me when I was “with” Lily.
It’s like if you come home and your best friend is crying on the couch, and they’re not your feelings, but your heart is breaking because you’re seeing someone you love in pain. That’s where I approach it from, character-wise. I guess it’s not quite a stable way to live [Laughs]. I feel for my characters. By the end of the movie, I’m scared of Lily. My imagination has always been overactive, so I’m happy there’s a job where that’s actually useful.
Was that very intense for you?
It was so fast and intense, and it mostly takes place in that one house. During filming we lived three minutes away from it, so the shooting experience mirrored the intensity of what these two young women were going through. The two of them have been estranged for a while. Then they become obsessed with each other in a short intense period of time, and we shot it in a short period of time, so that added something to it. But Liv and I had to treat each other really kindly on set, because Amanda and Lily have such a bizarre toxic, obsessive, almost tender relationship. We had to be very kind to each other and respect each other’s processes. I don’t think we could have survived the movie if we were Lily and Amanda the whole time.
Did you know Olivia before working with her?
Even though we hadn’t physically met each other, we were both at Sundance the same year. We were peripherally aware of each other, so it made it all the more special to be able to return to Sundance together for this film. I’ve been lucky to have incredible chemistry with a lot of actors, but with Olivia it was something on a different level, it was almost like we were completely physically, mentally, and emotionally aware of each other at all times from the first time we met. I would tuck my hair behind my left ear, and she would be doing the exact same thing. By the end of the first shooting day we became symbiotic, almost. It was this bizarre energy. We were always coiled around each other. Two years later it hasn’t really gone away, we still move in tandem. I believe things happen for a reason, and I think there was a reason it was Olivia and I who did this film together.
Is there any special memory from set that you two share?
We were shooting a scene in the wine cellar together very late at night, and at around 2 a.m., for some inexplicable reason, the door to the cellar locked and we couldn’t open it or continue doing the scene. So eventually we had to wake up the one locksmith, at 4 o’clock in the morning, to come and open the door so we could finish the scene. That was an intense moment. Another thing is there is this swing set behind the house. When things were getting emotionally difficult, I would just go out and swing. There was one time when I was dressed in all white, and it was really dark, I was swinging and Olivia thought I was a ghost. She was standing there scared, and I totally f—ed with her for a while.
What was it like working with Anton?
What I keep saying is that it’s difficult to talk about him as a person because he’s my friend and I miss him and it’s hard. Going on a press tour and having strangers talk about someone you love so much is a difficult thing to experience. But what’s been beautiful about this experience is that it’s not difficult to talk about him as a performer because he is so incredible. He has an ability to pick weird, quirky characters and imbue them with so much heart that you’re rooting for them. He has a truly beautiful soul. It’s been incredible to tour this movie around the country and see how unanimously loved and missed he is. In this film he took a character who, on the page, could have been quite a minor character in the hands of a lesser actor. And instead, Anton’s character is arguably the moral compass of our movie. He’s playing an older man who has had sexual relations with girls who were too young, so the fact that he manages to get you to root for him and think he is the best person in the movie… it’s all him, man. The movie is wonderful, I think he would be proud.
On such a quick shoot with loaded days, how would you guys unwind after set each day?
The cast and crew did a lot of karaoke in Cohasset. Despite the fact that it is so charged, Corey made an interesting point: Apparently on comedy sets people are more brisk with one another because the subject matter is light, but with darker films people are more gentle and kind to one another because you’re going to dark places and are emotionally vulnerable. So it was being cognizant of the fact that we were touching very dark subject matter, and everyone wanted to take care of one another. I’m Latin, I like hugs, so with every movie I’ve ever done, I start off giving hugs to everyone. Indefinite hugs.
Source: W Magazine
The actress, who last year took home the Chopard trophy for acting at Cannes, stars in “Thoroughbreds” alongside Olivia Cooke and Anton Yelchin.
“I’m very much a people person,” begins British actress Anya Taylor-Joy, upbeat and immediately chatty over the phone from Los Angeles. “I really trust my instincts when I meet somebody, and the second I met Cory, I just adored him.”
That would be Cory Finley, the director of “Thoroughbreds,” in which Taylor-Joy stars alongside Olivia Cooke. The dark comedy-thriller premiered at Sundance in 2017, and on Friday had its limited release. The film, Finley’s feature directorial debut, has garnered rave reviews for its stars’ performances of two misguided upper-class teens in Connecticut who hatch a murder plot.
“It was so witty and sharp, and superdeliciously dark and nasty,” Taylor-Joy says of the script, which she read while filming the Barack Obama biopic “Barry” in New York in 2016. “And the fact that it was between these two women that were just continuously circling each other and manipulating each other through dialogue, I just thought it’d be really fun to play.”
A day after wrapping “Barry,” she was in Massachusetts filming “Thoroughbreds.” She spent two days with Cooke hashing out their characters’ back stories, which helped to build their chemistry on-screen.
“The dialogue is so unrelenting and Olivia and I are so on top of each other with it — it’s very quick-paced — that by the end of that first day we were just so physically and emotionally aware of one other, and we became quite symbiotic actually, and it’s something that hasn’t gone away,” she says. “We still have this thing where when she moves, I move. I step with my left foot forward, she does the exact same thing at the same time. And I wonder if it will ever go away, but it definitely worked for the movie.”
Taylor-Joy describes their characters as “toxic.” In one scene, Cooke’s character shows Taylor-Joy’s her method for crying on demand, a manipulation tactic.
“Olivia and I both tried it, I don’t think it’s an actual thing, I think you just sort of have a panic attack because you’re not really breathing, so rather than having tears come out of your eyes you’re just like, ‘I’m going to die,’” says Taylor-Joy. “That scene actually comes from when Cory was acting in college. He had a couple of friends who used to boast that they could cry on cue, and this is how they did it — but I don’t think there’s much truth in it.”
While the two girls are the stars, the movie also features Anton Yelchin in a supporting role, his last prior to his unexpected death in summer of 2016. The film is dedicated in his honor.
“It’s very difficult to talk about him as a person, because he’s my friend and I deeply miss him,” says Taylor-Joy. “But from a professional point of view, I can say that he was unrivaled in his ability to bring so much energy and enthusiasm. He’s just such a lover of film, so the second he got on set we all just fell in love with him, both as a person but also we’re in awe of him as a performer. And he took a character that when I first saw the script, Tim [Yelchin’s character] in the hands of a lesser actor could have been far more of a minor character, but…[Yelchin] has an incredible ability to imbue his weird, sort of strange characters, with a lot of heart.”
Taylor-Joy, who broke onto the scene with her lead role in A24’s horror film “The Witch” and M. Night Shyamalan’s “Split” last year, won the Chopard Trophy award for promising young actors at the Cannes Film Festival in 2017. This year promises to be just as eventful: she has five films coming out between now and the beginning of 2019.
“Dude, I know, it’s crazy to think about,” she says. She’s also filming period film “Radioactive” with Rosamund Pike, and is slated to star in Kristin Scott Thomas’ directorial debut, “The Sea Change.”
“I’m very instinct-character-driven,” Taylor-Joy adds of her choice of projects. “I’ve never made the decision to go for genre, or films that are darker — it just so happens that the worlds these women that have called to me have inhabited are dark worlds. I just follow my characters wherever they decide,” she adds. “And do they inhabit a world I’m interested in exploring, and then how awesome is the director? If he said jump, would I? That kind of feeling.”
Source: WWD
On the heels of this morning’s news that Gore Verbinski has dropped out of directing Fox’s long-developed Gambit movie, the studio has revealed a new slate of release date shakeups, giving Gambit, Untitled Deadpool Sequel, and The New Mutants new release dates.
Good news first, Untitled Deadpool Sequel has been bumped up by two weeks and will now land in theaters on May 18, 2018 instead of June 1. Ryan Reynolds will return as the foul-mouthed vigilante alongside Brianna Hildebrand as Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Morena Baccarin as Vanessa, and (cringe) T.J. Miller as Weasel and newcomers Josh Brolin as Cable and Zazie Beets as Domino. The new release date puts Deadpool 2 a week ahead of the Star Wars box office domination that’s sure to come with Solo: A Star Wars story, a smart move considering the Star Wars films have proven to have long legs. Deadpool will now return to theaters up against Sony’s horror pic Slender Man.
Now the bad news. Josh Boone‘s horror-tinged take on The New Mutants is getting a major bump back on the schedule and will now land in theaters 10 months later than originally scheduled. The film moves from April 13, 2018 to February 22, 2019. Anya Taylor-Joy, Maisie Williams and Charlie Heaton star in the YA X-Men spinoff about a group of diverse teenage mutants kept in a research facility against their will. The shift prevents Fox from having two superhero films in theaters at the same time overseas, but the significant bump suggests that there are larger factors at play, either because the film needs more work before it’s ready for audiences or possibly due to strategy or fallout surrounding the Disney-Fox deal. Per The Tracking Board, the film tested OK, but the studio wants to rework it to be scarier in the wake of last year’s landmark year for horror.
Finally, there’s the Gambit movie, which has seen a tortured pre-production process, losing directors Doug Liman (American Made) and Rupert Wyatt (War for the Planet of The Apes), and as of this morning, Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean). The Channing Tatum vehicle has been pushed from the recently set February 14, 2019 to a summer slot on June 7, 2019. Per The Hollywood Reporter, the film has a “heavy comedic tone as it revolves around a heist” and the thinking is that it’ll do better as a summer Marvel movie.
X-Men: Dark Phoenix is still slated to hit theaters on November 2, 2018.
For more of the latest of Fox’s growing X-Men verse, check out our recent coverage in the links below.
Source: Collider
After breaking out in his psychological thriller “The Witch,” Anya Taylor-Joy is looking to reteam with director Robert Eggers on his new take on a cinematic classic.
Sources tell Variety that the “Split” actress is in negotiations to star in Studio 8’s remake of “Nosferatu.”
Eggers is writing and directing the pic. The 1922 silent movie followed the vampire Count Orlok of Transylvania, who wants to buy a house in Germany and becomes enamored of the real-estate agent’s wife. It was an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” and Werner Herzog directed a 1979 remake.
Chris Columbus and Eleanor Columbus will produce.
Eggers has already signed a deal with Studio 8 and is attached to direct “The Knight” for the studio. Jon Silk brought the “Nosferatu” project to Studio 8.
Eggers wanted to reteam with Taylor-Joy on the film early in the process, but after she became a bona fide movie star in M. Night Shyamalan’s hit “Split,” the young actress’ schedule has filled up. She is currently filming Josh Boone’s X-Men film “New Mutants” and is also signed on for the “Split” and “Unbreakable” sequel “Glass,” which also stars James McAvoy, Bruce Willis, and Samuel L. Jackson.
Taylor-Joy is repped by CAA and Troika.
Source: Variety
Josh Boone is directing the Fox movie from a script he co-wrote with Knate Gwaltney.
Fox’s long-awaited X-Men spinoff New Mutants is finally getting casting up.
Anya Taylor-Joy, the star of The Witch and Split, and Game of Thrones’ Maisie Williams have signed on to star in the project, the ensemble young adult super hero movie being directed by Josh Boone.
The movie is headed towards an early July start and is armed with a script by Boone and his writing partner, Knate Gwaltney. Simon Kinberg and Karen Rosenfelt are producing.
New Mutants, created by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, was the first X-Men comic spinoff, launched in the early 1980s as the franchise began two decades of dominating the comic book industry.
The movie will focus on the angst-driven adventures of a diverse group of teens that include Native American Danielle Moonstar, Scots girl Wolfsbane, Brazilian ladies man Sunspot, a Kentuckian code-named Cannonball, and Russian teen Magik. Also in the mix will be an alien named Warlock.
Taylor-Joy will play Magik, a girl who has learned sorcery and uses teleportation discs to travel. She is also the sister of Colossus, an X-Man who appeared in Deadpool.
Williams will play Wolfsbane, a girl struggling to reconcile her religious beliefs with her power to turn into a wolf.
Boone has been eyeing the actresses since last year but was only able pull the trigger on them once the movie was greenlit earlier this year. The movie has a April 13, 2018 release date.
The studio is making serious efforts to find ethnically appropriate actors, conducting wide searches for a Native American to play Moonstar and a South American for Sunspot.
Taylor-Joy broke out with the 2015 award-winning period horror movie The Witch and starred with James McAvoy in M. Night Shyamalan’s surprise hit, Split. She is repped by CAA, Felker Toczek and Troika in the UK.
Williams plays Arya Stark in Thrones, which launches its seventh season in July. She is repped by WME, Jackoway Tyerman and UK’s Louise Johnston Management.
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
First Marrowbone teaser reveals a sinister presence haunting Anya Taylor-Joy
The first sinister teaser trailer for screenwriter Sergio G. Sanchez’s directorial debut Marrowbone has dropped.
Marrowbone stars Anya Taylor-Joy, who recently wowed everyone with her acting turns in The Witch, Morgan and Split, alongside Mia Goth (A Cure for Wellness), George Mackay (Captain Fantastic) and Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things). The movie may be Sanchez’s first directing gig (he also wrote the script), dude is no stranger to horror. Sanchez penned the screenplay for the 2007 Spanish horror movie The Orphanage, which was directed by J.A. Bayona (Penny Dreadful, A Monster Calls), who also serves as executive producer on the upcoming film.
So, what’s Marrowbone about? Here’s the synopsis:
A young man and his four younger siblings, who have kept secret the death of their beloved mother in order to remain together, are plagued by a sinister presence in the sprawling manor in which they live.
Marrowbone will be released in movie theaters in Spain on October 27. There’s no North American release date yet, but here’s hoping we’re going to see this sooner rather than later.
Source: SyfyWire
M. Night Shyamalan Confirms ‘Split 2’, Now Titled ‘Glass’ and Set for 2019 Release
Spoilers aplenty for anyone who hasn’t seen Unbreakable or Split.
M. Night Shyamalan has had, and continues to have, one of the most fascinating careers in all of Hollywood. His big break came in the 1999 mystery thriller The Sixth Sense, which cemented Shyamalan as a master of the twist, ironically or not, in pop culture. The filmography gets decidedly more contested after that. For nearly 20 years, cinephiles have argued over the strengths and weaknesses of the writer/director’s work, but the biggest twist yet came just this year with the release of Split, his latest feature effort.
In this thriller, James McAvoy stars as Kevin Wendell Crumb, a man afflicted with two dozen personalities, some of which wage an internal war against the others for control of Kevin and the release of a powerful entity known as The Beast. Though Anya Taylor-Joy‘s character Casey Cooke survives an encounter with The Beast for surprising reasons, the biggest twist was this: Split was a sequel to Shyamalan’s 2000 film, Unbreakable, as confirmed by the reveal of Bruce Willis in the new film’s closing moments. Now, Shyamalan has revealed details for the third film in the shared cinematic universe, Glass.
Bruce Willis, Samuel L. Jackson, James McAvoy, and Anya Taylor-Joy will all star in Glass, due January 18, 2019.
Here’s the newly release synopsis for Glass:
M. Night Shyamalan brings together the narratives of two of his standout originals—2000’s UNBREAKABLE and last year’s SPLIT—in one explosive, all-new comic-book thriller: GLASS. From UNBREAKABLE, Bruce Willis returns as David Dunn as does Samuel L. Jackson as Elijah Price, known also by his pseudonym Mr. Glass. Joining from SPLIT are James McAvoy, reprising his role as Kevin Wendell Crumb and the multiple identities who reside within, and Anya Taylor-Joy as Casey Cooke, the only captive to survive an encounter with The Beast.
Following the conclusion of SPLIT, GLASS finds Dunn pursuing Crumb’s superhuman figure of The Beast in a series of escalating encounters, while the shadowy presence of Price emerges as an orchestrator who holds secrets critical to both men.
This riveting culmination of his worldwide blockbusters will be produced by Shyamalan and Jason Blum, who also produced the writer/director’s previous two films for Universal. They produce again with Ashwin Rajan and Marc Bienstock, and Steven Schneider, who will executive produce.
Source: Collider
   
   
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Photoshoots & Portraits > Photoshoots from 2017 > Session #10 – W #2
Saying in a pistachio-green embroidered Dior gown, her hair sprayed egg-yolk yellow, and her dark eyes flashing, the actress Anya Taylor-Joy brings to mind a punk version of Hamlet’s Ophelia—just before her tragic watery end.
“Bella! Divina!” cheers the photographer Paolo Roversi, as Taylor-Joy’s ethereal image appears on the digital screen. The gown, from Maria Grazia Chiuri’s debut couture collection for the French house, is one of many that the 20-year-old will don over the course of the next few hours, slipping effortlessly in and out of them, much the way she does the characters she embodies.
“This is playtime,” she says as she glides among the racks in between shots. “I can morph from one person to another really quickly. I have to think about what I can convey in a single picture.”
Taylor-Joy studied ballet but had no formal drama training; with her taut physique and unconventional beauty, she exudes the magnetic power of a silent movie star. “Look at those eyes!” exclaims Roversi moments later, as Taylor-Joy does her best Marilyn Monroe, singing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” while posing in a Chanel silver-sequined column topped with a cloud of tulle. “I love how ambiguous they are.”
Taylor-Joy’s otherworldliness is especially beguiling onscreen. In 2015’s The Witch, she played a tormented teenager in 17th-century New England whose family is torn apart after one of her brothers disappears. She followed that up with Morgan, appearing as a mesmerizingly violent cyborg struggling to come to terms with her human side. And in Split, M. Night Shyamalan’s disturbing thriller about a girl abducted by a man with multiple personalities, Taylor-Joy conveyed with simmering intensity not just the terror of being held captive but also the strength of mind needed to escape.
“Casey taught me to value being quiet,” she says of her character in the film. “A lot of the acting was based on stage direction rather than dialogue, so I really discovered how much I could communicate with my face.” Casey, she adds, “is an outsider with a deep internal wall. She stores information.”
Up next is Thoroughbred, playwright Cory Finley’s first feature film, which premiered to great acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival in January. Taylor-Joy is Lily, a girl of much privilege and few morals who teams up with a friend to lure an outcast into killing her stepfather. “Lily is a toxic character, but more by nurture than nature—she has been warped that way,” says Taylor-Joy, almost apologetically, as she wraps herself in a white terrycloth robe and tucks into her lunch of salad and focaccia. “The biggest challenge is playing an awful human being and keeping the audience on your side despite that.”
Finley was impressed by Taylor-Joy’s maturity. “With Thoroughbred, we were trying to walk a very narrow tonal line, and to make a film that was both an honest portrait of two characters and a satirical black comedy,” he says. “So much of the film rides on Anya’s role. She had to be sympathetic and frightening, sometimes at the same time. The role was physically and emotionally demanding, and she was able to go to dark places but to snap out of them quickly.”
One easily senses how deeply Taylor-Joy is able to delve into the psyches of the emotionally complex women she has taken on in her short career. “She’s pure and open internally, and that’s why she’s riveting,” says Shyamalan. “The thing she wants to do more than anything is protect her characters. Filming Split, I would say, ‘You have to defend Casey more,’ and she would tear up.” Taylor-Joy describes herself as “very porous” to the personalities of other people, both real and fictional, and recalls how, as a child, she was just as happy hanging out with her real friends as with imaginary ones. “I would go off into the woods and play out seven different characters. I think I was purging emotions, and by putting them into a story, I felt lighter. I do feel things so intensely.” Off camera, though, Taylor-Joy is upbeat and effervescent; she can go from a posh English accent to Eliza Doolittle cockney to a Valley girl drawl in seconds.
The youngest of six siblings, Taylor-Joy had a peripatetic upbringing—her Argentinean-Scottish father was a powerboat racer, and her English-Spanish mother worked in photography and design. She was born in Miami and spent her early childhood in Buenos Aires; the family moved to London when she was 6. Nowadays, she shuttles between London and New York, and says that the itinerant life has always suited her just fine. “My mother has a video of me at age 7 declaring, ‘I’m going to be an actor,’ ” Taylor-Joy says with a smile. “She asks me, ‘Are you going to drama school?’ and I reply that I’m going to be in the right place at the right time. Thank God it happened.”
Indeed, she was hanging out in Central London when Sarah Doukas (who discovered, among others, Kate Moss) spotted her and promptly signed her to her modeling agency, Storm. Taylor-Joy dropped out of school at age 16 and, while on a photo shoot, met the Irish actor Allen Leech (aka Tom Branson, the chauffeur on Downton Abbey); after hearing her deliver an impromptu reading from the Seamus Heaney book she was carrying, Leech introduced her to his agent. Within four years, she was nominated for a BAFTA Rising Star Award, the British equivalent of the Oscars, and named Breakthrough Actor at the Gotham Independent Film Awards.
Back at the W shoot, three assistants are holding Taylor-Joy aloft as she slowly disappears into a frothy sea of Giambattista Valli lime-green silk tulle. Suddenly, she stiffens her upper body and assumes a slightly mad, intoxicated expression. The entire studio is transfixed. “I go into a meditative state in front the camera, and I feel I’m speaking to it,” she explains later. “That might sound strange. I’m always surprised by how many close-ups there are of me after filming. I’m not aware of the lens.”
I venture that it’s clear she knows a thing or two about the transformative power of clothes. “Growing up, I was a real tomboy, and I was not aware of fashion,” Taylor-Joy says. “I wore my brothers’ clothes and whatever my mom bought me. I rarely looked in the mirror.” Modeling, and acting, changed all that. “When I had my first fitting, it frightened me because I felt so unlike me. I didn’t know how to wrap myself around the idea of looking beautiful. Now, I relish the idea of getting dressed up.” She pauses, recalling a certain featherlight Valentino chiffon confection that she had slipped out of moments before. “Wearing an incandescent dress feels peaceful, like magic,” she says, before adding, unnecessarily, “I’ve always loved make-believe.”
Source: W Magazine
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