Anya Taylor-Joy told Drew Barrymore about her bullying ordeal
(Picture: The Drew Barrymore Show)Anya Taylor-Joy has opened up about her traumatic experience of being bullied over her looks while growing up.
The 26-year-old model-turned-actress became a household name thanks to her starring role in 2020 hit Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit.
She’s also starred in Edgar Wright’s psychological horror film Last Night in Soho, crime drama Peaky Blinders and her latest role in psychological thriller sees her share the big screen with Ralph Fiennes and Nicholas Hoult.
She also received recently received the actress award at the Harper’s Bazaar Women of the Year Awards 2022.
Appearing on The Drew Barrymore Show on Thursday, Taylor-Joy admitted that her journey to the big time was not easy and thanked her parents for their continued support and encouragement.
Approaching the subject carefully, Barrymore asked The Northman star: “I heard you weren’t always embraced at school.”
Taylor-Joy replied: “I was very, very lucky with my parents because when I was bullied for my looks my mum always said you look at the inside of somebody.
“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? And I really have to give a big shout out to my mum for that because it was really helpful.”
In a previous interview, the star admitted that at times she had felt like she had struggled to fit in.
The star was born in the US and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, before moving to London when she was eight.
At the time she did not speak a word of English and found it hard to adapt to her new home country.
“Argentina is all green and I had horses and animals everywhere – all of a sudden I was in a big city and I didn’t speak the language,” she recalled to The Sun.
“I didn’t really feel like I fitted in anywhere. I was too English to be Argentine, too Argentine to be English, too American to be anything. The kids just didn’t understand me in any shape or form. I used to get locked in lockers.”
The effect, she said, was that she spent a lot of time in school “crying in bathrooms”.
She decided to move to New York at the age of 14, then gave up school two years later to pursue acting – a decision that “terrified” her family.
A lucky break came soon afterwards, back in London, when she was spotted by Sarah Doukas, founder of the prestigious Storm model agency who is also credited with discovering Kate Moss.
