Best Anya Taylor-Joy Movies

Few actors have built a filmography this interesting this fast. Anya Taylor-Joy went from an unknown teenager in Robert Eggers’ Puritan horror film The Witch to the lead of a Mad Max movie in about nine years, and she did it by picking roles that nobody else would have chosen. She doesn’t chase franchises or play it safe. The best Anya Taylor-Joy movies share a common thread: women who are underestimated, cornered, and quietly dangerous.

What makes her so watchable isn’t just the acting. It’s those eyes. Enormous, set wide apart, capable of projecting innocence and menace in the same frame. From The Witch to Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, directors love shooting her face in close-up because it does half the storytelling for them. But Taylor-Joy brings serious craft to back up the screen presence, and her best performances show an actor who’s willing to disappear completely into a character’s skin.

Here are the best Anya Taylor-Joy films, the ones that show exactly why she’s become one of the most exciting actors working today.

The Debut That Started Everything

The Witch (2015)

This is where it all began. Robert Eggers cast Taylor-Joy as Thomasin, a Puritan teenager whose family gets ripped apart by paranoia, religious terror, and something lurking in the woods. The role demanded that she carry nearly every scene while speaking in period-accurate Early Modern English, and she made it look effortless. The final sequence, where Thomasin walks naked into the forest and chooses the devil over her family’s suffocating piety, is one of the most chilling endings in modern horror. Taylor-Joy plays that moment with zero hesitation. It’s not a breakdown. It’s a liberation. For a debut performance, it’s almost unfairly good.

The Ones Where She Gets to Be Funny

Here’s a movie that could have easily been a one-joke premise stretched too thin. A group of wealthy diners visit an exclusive island restaurant where the chef (Ralph Fiennes, terrifying in an apron) has planned an evening that goes way beyond fine dining. Taylor-Joy plays Margot, the one guest who doesn’t belong, and she’s the audience surrogate without ever feeling like a passive observer. The scene where she flatly asks for a cheeseburger, refusing to play along with the pretension, is genuinely hilarious. She matches Fiennes beat for beat, which is no small thing. The film works as satire, as dark comedy, and as a thriller, and Taylor-Joy is the reason it holds together.

Thoroughbreds (2018)

Cory Finley’s debut is a nasty little gem. Taylor-Joy plays Lily, a Connecticut prep school girl who reconnects with her old friend Amanda (Olivia Cooke), a teenager who claims she can’t feel emotions. Together they hatch a plan to kill Lily’s stepfather. What makes Taylor-Joy’s performance so good here is how she plays against type. Lily seems like the normal one at first, the empathetic counterpart to Amanda’s flat affect. But as the film progresses, you realize Lily might be the more dangerous of the two. She’s calculating underneath the polish. It’s a small film that didn’t get the attention it deserved, but Taylor-Joy and Cooke are a perfect pair. If you like your thrillers ice-cold and darkly funny, this one’s for you.

Going Big: The Blockbuster Turn

Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (2024)

Taking over a role that Charlize Theron owned is a terrible idea on paper. George Miller didn’t care. He cast Taylor-Joy as the young Furiosa and built an entire origin story around her, spanning years of captivity, revenge, and survival in the wasteland. Taylor-Joy barely speaks for long stretches of the film, communicating instead through body language and those ever-expressive eyes. She plays Furiosa as someone who has learned to make herself small and invisible while plotting something enormous. The action sequences are peak Miller mayhem, but the quiet moments belong entirely to Taylor-Joy. It’s a different performance than Theron’s. Less fury, more cold patience. Chris Hemsworth chews the scenery as the villain Dementus, but Taylor-Joy holds the center by doing less, not more.

The Edgar Wright Collaboration

Last Night in Soho (2021)

This one’s divisive, and I get why. Edgar Wright’s psychological horror about a fashion student (Thomasin McKenzie) who can psychically travel to 1960s London doesn’t totally stick the landing. The third act gets messy. But Taylor-Joy as Sandy, the glamorous aspiring singer from the past, is magnetic every second she’s on screen. The early Soho sequences, where Sandy performs in smoky clubs and navigates the predatory music industry, are the best stretches of the film. Taylor-Joy radiates charisma and vulnerability in equal measure, making you understand exactly why McKenzie’s character becomes obsessed with her. When things go dark, and they go very dark, Taylor-Joy commits fully. It’s not her strongest movie overall, but it might contain some of her most purely watchable screen time.

What Connects All These Performances

Look at these five roles side by side: a Puritan girl, a sociopathic rich kid, a customer who refuses to die, a road warrior, a doomed singer. They don’t have much in common on the surface. But Taylor-Joy brings the same quality to all of them. Her characters watch and wait. They read the room before anyone else does. And when they finally act, it’s decisive.

That’s the secret to her screen presence. She doesn’t play victims, even when her characters are in horrible situations. Thomasin chooses the devil. Margot demands her cheeseburger. Furiosa bides her time for years. There’s always agency, always a brain working behind those wide-set eyes.

These five films represent the range of what Taylor-Joy can do. The Witch is slow-burn folk horror. The Menu is pitch-black satire. Thoroughbreds is a suburban poison pill. Furiosa is an epic built on restraint. And Last Night in Soho lets her be glamorous and tragic in equal measure. Each one showcases a different gear, and she never coasts in any of them.

Taylor-Joy just turned 30, which feels slightly absurd when you look at what she’s already accomplished. Whether you want horror, dark comedy, or full-throttle action, the best Anya Taylor-Joy movies offer something for everyone willing to watch a performer who never takes the easy road. Browse more of her films and related titles in our full collection.