Anna Taylor-Joy says director's note from M. Night Shyamalan 'opened a whole other universe' for her

Anna Taylor-Joy has credited M. Night Shyamalan for giving her the most useful director's note of her career so far.

These days Taylor-Joy is a big name in the film industry and she's starred in a series of critically acclaimed movies; but if you rewind back to 2016, the 30-year-old wasn't as well known.

What really got Taylor-Joy on the map was her portrayal of Beth Harmon in Netflix'sThe Queen's Gambit – and the rest was history.

Prior to The Queen's Gambit, Taylor-Joy played Casey Cooke in Shyamalan's movie Split alongside James McAvoy, The White Lotus star Haley Lu Richardson, and Hollywood legend Bruce Willis

In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Taylor-Joy credited Shyamalan for giving her the most helpful note she's ever gotten from a director.

Anna Taylor-Joy has revealed the director's note she's found to be most useful (Gilbert Flores/Variety via Getty Images)

"It would probably be M. Night Shyamalan," she replied. "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.

"It completely opened a whole other universe for me in terms of character work."

The Peaky Blinders star went on: "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."

The actress seen with M. Night Shyamalan and James McAvoy in 2017 (Matthew Eisman/Getty Images)

Her comments about Shyamalan after she recently shared her thoughts on method acting – something that a lot of actors like Robert De Niro, Christian Bale, and Daniel Day-Lewis are known to do.

Speaking to Complex, Taylor-Joy explained why women like herself often won't opt for method acting.

"If you’ll notice, women don’t method act because we have things to take care of, so we can’t completely lose our minds," the Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga favorite said.

"I see acting as a controlled psychosis in a way. You’re pretending to be somebody else and having their thoughts 16 hours a day and moving like them, in their house, in their clothes," Taylor-Joy continued.

"It’s like having a sister or a roommate check in up [in my mind] for a little bit."

She went on to say that she couldn't imagine 'keeping it up all the time' because she works with so many people and it's her responsibility 'to be good to them'.

The actress added that if someone is 'too invested' in playing the bad guy, then 'that's not going to be great fun' for the people around them on the movie set.