Tag: Anya Taylor-Joy

Anya Taylor Joy recently turned 28 years old, and she’s currently starring in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. That’s why she’s on the cover of the latest Elle Magazine. Anya’s interviews are never full of gossip or shade, and this Elle piece is no different, but I still enjoyed reading it. She’s a sensitive person who feels like she really doesn’t fit in anywhere. She spent her early childhood in Argentina and she still considers English her second language. Her slippery nationality seems to enable her to play basically any character. Currently, she resides in LA with her husband of two years, Malcolm. Some highlights from Elle:

On Furiosa: “The most beautiful and heartbreaking thing about Furiosa is that she’s the embodiment of impossible hope—living in a world where everything is a violation to you. The air that you breathe, the lack of food, the fact that empathy is punished, that trust is punished. And throughout it all, she just has this relentless conviction that she’s going to make good on that promise she made. I still get chills thinking about it.”

The ‘Furiosa’ shoot: “I was really pushing the boundary of what my body and mind could do,” she says, recalling 3 A.M. rides to set. “I was driving through the streets of Sydney like, ‘I’ve not seen a single person in months. I haven’t seen anybody who doesn’t look like they’re in the Wasteland. I’ve been living in an alien world.’”

Why she took the role: “I wanted to really understand grit in a different way. Because I knew that I had it. But I understood that in isolation, I was going to really experience it. Okay, you’re in a house in the middle of nowhere with just your thoughts and this character. How do you cope with that? And when you don’t have comfort around you—when there’s nothing that you can turn to for distraction—how are you going to experience that? My favorite flowers have always been seeded dandelions or the daisies that grow through concrete. I think I wanted to be placed in concrete. I wanted to understand how that would feel. When you get too comfortable, you stop growing.”

A workaholic: “I woke up and realized I had not taken a break in 10 years. I’ve always been somebody who wants to take care of other people before taking care of myself. I have always been sick, and working, or exhausted at dinner. I was like, I need to figure out what I do for fun.”

Her marriage: After so many years on the move, she made a home with Malcolm McRae, 30, one half of the band more* (asterisk theirs). The couple’s September 2023 wedding at a historic palazzo in Venice included guests Cara Delevingne and Julia Garner. Naturally, the bride wore custom Dior. The couple had quietly eloped 17 months earlier, just before Taylor-Joy returned to Australia to shoot Furiosa. “We’re just real romantics. We were born on the same day. And we wanted to make sure that our first experience was something that was completely for us. So we eloped in New Orleans with our two best friends and had the time of our lives. It was magical. But I’m lucky to say that the second experience—with all of our families—was so beyond beautiful, and I just feel very, very lucky.”

She’s become obsessed with The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City. Reality TV used to depress her, but a friend insisted they watch that infamous finale—“Receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots!”—and now Taylor-Joy is hooked: “I don’t know what happened in my brain, but I’m so invested. I’ve never seen so many people yell at the same time.”

[From Elle]

Anya and Malcolm were both born on April 16, but two years apart. I always find it spooky when someone has my birthday, but Anya is into it (typical Aries). Marriage agrees with her – this is the most settled and calm she’s ever seemed to me in an interview. Usually, she sounds like one ball of chaos, but I think she finally got some time off, she’s making a home with Malcolm, and she’s experiencing life away from her job. I’m not into RHOSLC, but yeah, that “receipts, proof, timeline, screenshots” clip is amazing.

Cover courtesy of Elle, additional photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.

Here are some photos of Anya Taylor Joy in Hollywood last week, and Cannes this week (the big hat pics). Anya and Chris Hemsworth have already traveled to several countries to promote Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and they will premiere the film at Cannes on Wednesday. I actually forgot that Cannes starts this week. Last year’s festival ended up being kind of…boring. I wonder if the festival will pick up some energy this year.

Anyway, George Miller’s films are notoriously difficult to shoot. On Mad Max: Fury Road, Charlize Theron had the worst experience of her life, not just because they were all stuck in the Namibian desert for a year, but because Tom Hardy was a complete douchebag to her and to everyone who worked on the film. Would it surprise anyone to learn that Anya also went through some things while filming Furiosa? This is how she discussed it with the New York Times:

How did she feel in late 2022, when she finally wrapped the arduous production?

“Like I knew I was going to need the two years that it took for the movie to come out to deal with it,” she said.

Taylor-Joy told me that championing Furiosa often felt like a solitary experience.

“I’ve never been more alone than making that movie,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “I don’t want to go too deep into it, but everything that I thought was going to be easy was hard.”

Her reticence reminded me of when I first spoke to the actors who had made “Fury Road”: During that shoot, the desperation of the characters bled into their real lives, and unpacking that experience took a very long time. Sensing that she was skirting a sensitive issue, I asked Taylor-Joy what exactly it was about “Furiosa” that had proved more difficult than she expected. For five long seconds, she contemplated giving me an answer.

“Next question, sorry,” she said. There was a faraway look in her eyes, as if a part of her had been left behind in that wasteland. “Talk to me in 20 years,” she said. “Talk to me in 20 years.”

[From The NY Times]

A few years ago, there was a book/oral-history about the making of Mad Max: Fury Road and how dysfunctional everything was for months, almost entirely because of Tom Hardy. Charlize had to repeatedly demand a female producer because she felt threatened by Tom, who was chronically late, chronically unprofessional and chronically threatening Charlize. I came out of the piece sort of hating George Miller for not being “in charge” of the production and for not taking care of Charlize and the other actresses (who all hated Hardy). I’m not saying that the exact same thing happened on this film – I doubt Chris Hemsworth would behave that way, and he and Anya seem to get along – but I bet Anya wasn’t “taken care of” or nurtured by anyone. I bet she felt very, very alone.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.