Anya Taylor-Joy gets candid about feeling ‘hunted’ as her fame took off

Anya Taylor-Joy admitted that she may have protected herself 'too much' when it comes to handling fame.

Taylor-Joy has been in the movie industry for many years, but her career really took off following the success of the Netflix series The Queen's Gambit, where the actress played the lead of Beth Harmon. Many fans of the mini-series have described it as a 'masterpiece'.

Since then, the 30-year-old has featured in films like The Gorge, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, and The Menu. One of her latest projects is the TV series Lucky on AppleTV, and she also has a major role in the highly anticipated third instalment of the Dune franchise – which hits theaters later this year.

The more success Taylor-Joy has experienced, the more famous she's become, something she recently discussed in an interview with V Magazine, carried out by her friend Miley Cyrus.

Anna Taylor-Joy has been interviewed by Miley Cyrus for V Magazine (Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

'It took me a minute to not feel hunted'

Cyrus asked the Peaky Blinders star: "Fame is part of the job, and it exposes parts of our lives that have nothing to do with the work. How have you learned to protect the parts of yourself that are just yours?"

"If anything, I think I’ve protected myself too much," Taylor-Joy replied. "It took me a minute to not feel hunted, to not want to hide."

She added: "I’ve learned to take things less seriously by choosing which opinions actually matter to me and which are based on very little information at all."

Cyrus also addressed Taylor-Joy's role in Dune: Part Three and asked how she feels about the franchise's 'passionate' fanbase.

The singer quizzed her: "Do you ever think about expectations? And whose opinion matters most to you? Is there someone in your life you’re still secretly trying to impress?"

The person Taylor-Joy said she's trying to impress is herself, as she admitted that she has 'absurdly high standards' which she finds to be 'exhausting at times'.

The actress opened up on how she deals with fame (Monica Schipper/WireImage)

'Sometimes perfection is in letting go'

She went on: "Not so much for other people but personally. I care so much about the creation that I want to make sure I’ve given it my best.

"Growing up has meant I’ve learned that sometimes perfection is in letting go."

Before Dune, Taylor-Joy starred in the horror movie Split. In it she plays a teenager who is kidnapped by a man with dissociative identity disorder (portrayed by James McAvoy).

She recently recalled one of the director's note she received from M. Night Shyamalan while making the film that 'opened a whole other universe' for her.

"On Split, I remember him saying to me, 'Anya, don’t cry your own tears. Cry the character’s tears.' Because he had seen me cry before, so he knew what was mine," Taylor-Joy told The Wall Street Journal last month.

Going on to explain why she found his advice so beneficial, the actress said: "It completely opened a whole other universe for me in terms of character work. If I was consistently tapping into events of my own life, I feel like that well would run dry at some point, or start to feel stale or unspecific.

"If I empathize enough with the person that I’m playing, they walk differently, they talk differently, they cry differently, they sleep differently, they wake up differently, and that’s just so much more rewarding for me."