Anya Taylor-Joy’s relationship with mirrors changed the moment she saw a Facebook post mocking her appearance. The Queen’s Gambit star, known for her striking features and immense talent, admitted that online bullying took a toll on her self-image.
“I was never aware that my eyes were far apart,” she told W Magazine in 2016. “Then someone tagged me in a picture with a fish and they were like, ‘This is you ‘cause your eyes are like here.’ And I was really upset about it. I didn’t enjoy it, and I kind of stopped looking in mirrors for a very long time.” Even now, years later, she confessed, “I still don’t really spend a lot of time in front of mirrors because I don’t really have to deal with my face. Unfortunately, y’all do.”
That wasn’t the first time she faced criticism about her looks. Long before she became a Hollywood star, Taylor-Joy struggled with bullying. Growing up in Argentina before moving to the UK, she felt like an outsider.
“I was too English to be Argentine, too Argentine to be English, too American to be anything,” she told The Sun in 2020. The transition wasn’t easy. “The kids just didn’t understand me in any shape or form. I used to get locked in lockers. I spent a lot of time in school crying in bathrooms.”
Her isolation made her equate loneliness with something negative. “I was so lonely as a kid. I felt so isolated that I created this story in my head about lonely being bad, being alone being bad. That can be quite an impactful feeling, especially if you’ve taught yourself to fear it.”
Despite the painful experiences, Taylor-Joy found strength in her family. On The Drew Barrymore Show, she thanked her mother ‘cause of how she taught her to value people for their character rather than their looks.
“When I was bullied for my looks, my mum always said you look at the inside of somebody. You don’t look at class, you don’t look at anything like that. You don’t look at what they do for a job. It’s just, do you like that person’s heart?”
The actress channeled those lessons into her career. Be it her breakout role in The Witch or her impeccable performances in Peaky Blinders and The Queen’s Gambit, she proved that talent speaks louder than online criticism.
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