Anya Taylor-Joy is a “scummy mud-caked ferret”.
Anya Taylor-Joy doesn't feel at ease on the red carpet
The 25-year-old actress – who was scouted as a model when she was 16 – admitted she “couldn’t handle” the idea of “being pretty” and dressing up on the red carpet because it wasn’t an image that sat comfortably with her.
She said: “When I first started doing red carpets, I couldn’t handle the notion of being pretty. I was like, ‘I don’t do that. I don’t attempt it.’
“I am a scummy, mud-caked ferret and striving for anything different felt disingenuous and scary.”
The ‘Queen’s Gambit’ star experienced “intense” bullying when she was at school.
She recalled: “[I was] locked in lockers, barred from classrooms, not invited to things.
“[When it got] too intense, I would get all my homework and I would just walk out the front door and go home.”
When she was 14, Anya convinced her parents to let her go to New York alone for a two-week directing programme and they allowed her to quit school when she was 16, which she believes is partly down to being the youngest of six children.
She told Britain’s Vogue magazine: “They treated me like a little adult very early on.
“Maybe they got tired of a certain type of parenting?”
As a child, the ‘Emma’ star didn’t care about having friends because she had a vivid imagination.
She said: “It didn’t matter if you didn’t want to play with me, because I would have enough characters in my head.”
The first time Anya felt she “fit in” was making ‘The Witch’, when she befriended Kate Dickie, who played her mother in the film.
She said: “[Kate was my] first real best friend. I only made friends close to my age group maybe three or four years ago.
“I think Ivy [Getty] was the first.”
Tagged in Anya Taylor-Joy