Anya-Josephine Taylor-Joy (April 16, 1996) is a British-American model, actress, and singer. Born in Miami, she grew up in Buenos Aires, Argentina, before moving to London at the age of six. There, she attended the Queen’s Gate School and was later scouted by Sarah Doukas of Storm Model Management while exiting a Harrod’s. Her modeling days as a teenager served as a platform to pursue an acting career as she jumped into the spotlight on Robert Eggers’ period horror film The Witch (2015) and later starred in M. Night Shyamalan’s Split (2016) alongside James McAvoy. However, her breakthrough arrived a few years later, when she landed the lead role of Beth Harmon on the Netflix miniseries The Queen’s Gambit (2020), a performance that earned her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Miniseries or Television Film. In 2021, Anya Taylor-Joy continued to demonstrate her versatility by appearing on Edgar Wright’s psychological thriller Last Night in Soho, also contributing to the film’s soundtrack with renditions of Cilla Black’s “You’re My World” and Petula Clark’s “Downtown.”
