--- description: Find out how Anya Taylor-Joy is shaping the future and defining the next generation of leadership. title: 2021 TIME100 Next: Anya Taylor-Joy image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5724736cc8bc4908/698a171197cdff5b5c6bbac9/time100-next-Anya-Taylor-Joy.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 --- Feb 16, 2021 # Anya Taylor-Joy by Garry Kasparov  Anya Taylor-Joy in New York, Feb. 4, 2020\. Other movie versions of the Jane Austen heroine emphasized her charms. This time she doesn't care about pleasing her audience. (Jingyu Lin/The New York Times) Anya Taylor-Joy in New York, Feb. 4, 2020\. Other movie versions of the Jane Austen heroine emphasized her charms. This time she doesn't care about pleasing her audience. (Jingyu Lin/The New York Times)Jingyu Lin—The New York Times/Redux Anya Taylor-Joy explodes the caricature of the misanthrope chess player into a million artfully placed pieces in [Netflix’s hit miniseries _The Queen’s Gambit_](https://time.com/5901699/queens-gambit-review-netflix/ "undefined"), bringing novelist Walter Tevis’ chess prodigy Beth Harmon to full, complicated life. She did it while embracing the game of chess itself, with all of its difficulty and tension. She learned to move the pieces and her body the way a professional player does, something akin to learning a new language. As Beth, Taylor-Joy is a hyper-competitive chess genius whose dedication to the game makes the audience fall in love with it too. It wouldn’t surprise me if her stellar portrayal does more to promote chess worldwide than all the real-world champions. Anyone who can do that can do anything. _Kasparov, a former world chess champion, was a consultant on_ The Queen’s Gambit ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"Article","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-next-2021/5937738/anya-taylor-joy/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-next-2021/5937738/anya-taylor-joy/"},"headline":"Anya Taylor-Joy","datePublished":"2021-02-16T21:30:36.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-02T23:47:14.926Z","description":"","url":"https://time.com/collections/time100-next-2021/5937738/anya-taylor-joy/","keywords":["list","franchise","TIME 100 Next"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5724736cc8bc4908/698a171197cdff5b5c6bbac9/time100-next-Anya-Taylor-Joy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME Staff","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/time-staff/"}],"creator":"TIME Staff","articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt5724736cc8bc4908/698a171197cdff5b5c6bbac9/time100-next-Anya-Taylor-Joy.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/collections/time100-next-2021/5937738/anya-taylor-joy/","name":"Anya Taylor-Joy"}}]}] ```