RELENTLESS, ROMANTIC AND A LITTLE BIT PSYCHIC

Furiosa star Anya Taylor-Joy has been driving full throttle for a decade. The signs say that she might finally be home.

- MICKEY RAPKIN

For a long time, anya taylor-joy kept a secret. Aside from her mother, very few people in her life knew the truth. Anything to keep the tabloids from finding out. The fact that she and a certain new man in her life were able to keep the story as quiet as they did—for as long as they did—was, she says today, “unbelievable.”

To be clear, the secret she’s referring to was her shock appearance in Dune: Part Two, a minute-long fever dream that made international news and reportedly set up a major role in the next film. News of her cameo—unknown perhaps even to her costar Zendaya—broke just before the London premiere earlier this year. “I think Z had suspicions whilst filming,” Taylor-Joy says, adding, “I really wanted them to know. I didn’t just want to show up and be like, ‘Hi.’”

Yet there she was on the sand-colored “red carpet” in custom Dior Haute Couture, a white cape framing her face (Hi!). Nearby, Zendaya stunned in retro-futuristic Mugler. But to industry watchers, that night was about more than fashion. It was the unofficial coronation of a new class of bona fide A-list movie stars in Timothée Chalamet, Zendaya, Austin Butler, Florence Pugh, and now Anya Taylor-Joy.

At 28, Taylor-Joy was a movie star with one tiny, pesky asterisk: She hadn’t actually starred in a blockbuster movie yet. That all changed this May with the launch of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, a prequel to George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road. And it’s a seriously big swing. That last film made approximately $380 million worldwide and scored 10 Academy Award nominations, winning six. It was also a notoriously difficult shoot. After seeing the film, Steven Soderbergh muttered: “I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.”