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EDITED BY
HANNAH-ROSE YEEAnya Taylor-Joy likes to joke about it,
but it’s true: she really did go to the
Sundance Film Festival and never came
home. It was there, in 2015, that her
first film – an eerie, unsettling Salem-
era period piece called The Witch –
premiered to rapturous acclaim.
Since then the 20-year-old has filled
her résumé with movies that go bump
in the night; from sci-fi thriller Morgan
to this month’s Split, an M. Night
Shyamalan number (he of The Sixth
Sense) in which she stars alongside
a terrifying James McAvoy. The role
is sure to cement her as cinema’s
new scream queen (of the Jamie Lee
Curtis and Janet Leigh variety).
“Madness,” says Taylor-Joy, when
trying to sum up the past two years. “I
can’t believe that I’m on this adventure.”
Born in Miami, Florida, and raised
in London, Taylor-Joy got her first taste
of showbiz as a model, scouted by Sarah
Doukas, the woman who discovered
Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne.
This year, she hints, will be her
biggest yet, with a new project she
“can’t really say anything about, but
I’m pretty pumped”. Before that there’s
the premiere of Split at Los Angeles’s
Chinese Theatre. “That was the first
place I ever went on holiday in LA.
And now my film will be screening
there,” she says. “That’s been the
biggest pinch-me moment so far.”
GIRL OF
THE MOMENT
In this month’s M. Night
Shyamalan thriller cinema has
found its new scream queenWATCH IT!
Split is in
cinemas on
January 26.