The character that Anya Taylor-Joy felt most connected to: “It’s a calling. You answer it”
It must feel pretty special as an actor to get to play a character whom you connect with on a strong personal level, perhaps coming to feel a little protective of them.
While some actors thrive in roles that are nothing like them, such as Jodie Comer as Villanelle in Killing Eve, it seems like there’s nothing quite like landing a role that you feel close to, and for Anya Taylor-Joy, she found a sense of kinship with a character who helped provide her with her mainstream breakthrough, even if they didn’t share the exact same passion.
The actor first gained recognition for her role in Robert Eggers’ folk horror tale The VVitch, portraying a young woman who finds herself drawn into a world of witchcraft as the rest of her family succumbs to a pretty nasty fate. But it wasn’t until she appeared in The Queen’s Gambit in 2020 that she became more well-known, leading the Netflix series to greatness.
Released during the pandemic, it was prime time for people to latch onto a new series, and The Queen’s Gambit quickly became one of the streaming service’s most popular shows. Viewed by millions, you couldn’t escape the image of Taylor-Joy as Beth every time you opened up the app. Unsurprisingly, the actor won a plethora of awards for her performance as the rising chess master, including a Golden Globe.
Set in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the show, based on the book by Walter Tevis, depicts the orphaned Beth’s struggles with drug and alcohol addiction while rising to become one of the country’s most impressive chess players, carrying plenty of trauma as a result of her childhood circumstances, and this emotional response emerges through both her passion for chess and her dependence on substances.
While Taylor-Joy can’t say she has faced the same trauma and addictions as Beth, the actor once admitted that she felt a connection between herself and her character’s obsessive tendencies. For her, it’s acting that, from a young age, became her vice, becoming increasingly dedicated to being the best she can possibly be.
“It was important for me to honour the chess community and understand what I was doing,” she told The Guardian, “But I also likened Beth’s passion for chess to my passion for acting. It’s a calling. You answer it. Then you become obsessed and spend the rest of your life figuring out how to get better at it.”
Taylor-Joy has lent herself to many successful projects since landing her life-changing role in The VVitch, starring in everything from Jane Austen adaptations like Emma, beloved BBC dramas such as Peaky Blinders, and, more recently, she played the titular character in Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga.
But it’ll always be Beth from The Queen’s Gambit who sticks out as one of the most important characters she has ever played, not just because of the awards it won her and the recognition it gave her, but because she found a sense of recognition in her passion, which made her realise that acting will always be the thing she has to keep going after, perfecting, and dedicating her life to.
