Queen’s Gambit star Anya Taylor-Joy has perfect strategy to take her to the top

Like a true champion, actress Anya Taylor-Joy had the perfect strategy to take her to the top.

The star of The Queen’s Gambit – Netflix ’s smash-hit drama about a chess genius – knew at an early age that she wanted to be an actor.

Check… at just five she declared her Hollywood dream.

Check… at seven she told her parents she wanted an agent.

Check… she was “a leading light” in early shows at a London prep school.

Check… a high-profile modelling agency gave her a break before Anya, now 24, moved into acting full-time.

Check, check, check… big movie roles came her way in The Witch and period drama Emma – while British TV fans saw her as the meddling American wife of Michael Gray in TV’s Peaky Blinders.

And now, checkmate… she has been lauded far and wide for The Queen’s Gambit and her brilliant performance as tortured Beth Harmon.

Her character is on a quest to become the world’s greatest chess player while struggling with emotional problems and drug and alcohol dependency.

Anya has battled “demons” herself – and says she will talk about them “one day”.

Right now, she is riding the crest of a showbiz wave.

Netflix bosses have been doing cartwheels after 62 million viewers tuned in globally to the seven-part series, released last month.

Its success is credited with making chess a lockdown game of choice – while fashion, food and home furnishings industries are suddenly awash with chequerboard designs on everything from bath mats and cake toppings to coats.

And it is just the start of something really special for Anya, who is currently filming The Northman in the Antrim Hills, half-an-hour north of Belfast.

It’s a revenge saga set in Iceland at the turn of the 10th century and the A-list cast includes Nicole Kidman, Ethan Hawke, Willem Dafoe and singer Bjork.

It’s big budget, with movie sources revealing a fleet of helicopters fly stars from palatial rentals to remote locations.

Because of lockdown, the actors are in bubbles – accompanied by drivers, housekeepers and personal assistants.

It’s proof of Anya’s move into the big league. As is the size of her Instagram following – up from one million to 2.8million since The Queen’s Gambit.

And there’s little time to relax as other projects are already lined up – including the prequel to Mad Max: Fury Road.

Before that, another of her movies, the psychological thriller Last Night In Soho, is released. It all helps the bank balance, of course.

Anya picked up between £100,000 and £200,000 for The Queen’s Gambit. But movie roles are expected to pay ten times that sum.

And while Hollywood directors clamour for her, she has also forged relationships with fashion houses, much like fellow star Emma Corrin, who plays Princess Diana in The Crown.

Like Emma, Anya has been working with designer Miu Miu and she is also the face of Viktor and Rolf fragrances. Anya’s free-spirited parents helped guide her to stardom.

Born in Miami, she is the daughter of a Scottish-Argentinian former world powerboat champion – Dennis Alan Taylor, now 80.

In his other career as an investment banker in Buenos Aires, Dennis was awarded an MBE for “services to British trade with Argentina” some 18 years after the end of the Falklands War.

Her mum is Jennifer-Marina, 59, a Spanish-English psychologist who Anya says is “always laughing and dancing and very passionate about the world”.

Jennifer-Marina and Dennis have a £4.5million apartment in London’s Belgravia and moved to the UK when Anya was six. Before that, the future star and her four older siblings were raised in Argentina.

Anya has said that coming to live in the UK was tough. She did not speak English and, struggling to adapt, said she spent a lot of time in school “crying in bathrooms”.

Anya attended the Hill House prep school in London, where bursar William Townend recalls: “The girls all did a musical at the end of one of the years and she was certainly a leading light. I would imagine it may be where she got the acting bug from.”

Anya would struggle at her next school, Queen’s Gate in South Ken-sington, whose ex-pupils include celebrity chef Nigella Lawson and the Duchess of Cornwall.

By the time she was studying for her GCSEs, Anya was being home-schooled – but fame, or a shot at it, was just around the corner.

A teenage Anya got her lucky break when she was spotted by Storm model agency founder Sarah Doukas, who is credited with discovering Kate Moss.

And only last week she described how she got to meet the modelling guru, telling OK! magazine: “I was walking my dog outside Harrods. I had a party the next day and had never worn high heels.

“I was nervous, so I decided to practise and I took my dog for a walk in the heels. While I was out, this big black car started following me. So I picked up my dog and I started running. And then the guy stuck his head out of the window and said, ‘If you stop, you won’t regret it’.

“Thinking back, that’s the best line for any horror movie ever. But, for some reason, I stopped. It was the head of a modelling agency in the car and I did go into the agency the next day with my parents.

“My mum did tell me off for stopping – but it worked out.”

Anya quickly moved into acting and the rest, as they say, is history.

While her Queen’s Gambit character has issues, Anya spoke last week about the real-life mental health issues she had as she grew up.

She told OK!: “When I was younger, I felt so alone and so unseen and very different.

“I didn’t have a place in the world that could understand me or hold me, but I think it’s really important that every human being deserves to know that they should be seen and understood and held by somebody. Every human deserves to know they are special, valued and understood.

“I have a lot of demons in my past.

At some point, I’ll be willing to talk about it. But I want to make sure that when I do talk, it’s not out of a place of shame. I want it to have the correct impact, so I’m biding my time. But it’s definitely something that I’m very passionate about.”

Thanks to her ever-increasing profile, the world will listen when Anya does speak out.

The Queen’s Gambit is named after an opening move in chess – where white sacrifices a pawn to gain an advantage on black. Already, the show’s success has led to Anya being tipped for glory at next year’s Emmys and Golden Globes.

Brodie Cooper, of US PR and marketing company PRrppd, said: “Anya is now one of the biggest stars in TV.