{"id":249710,"date":"2026-07-02T13:00:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/02\/anya-taylor-joy-explains-how-her-love-of-animals-led-to-acting-career\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T13:00:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T13:00:19","slug":"anya-taylor-joy-explains-how-her-love-of-animals-led-to-acting-career","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/2026\/07\/02\/anya-taylor-joy-explains-how-her-love-of-animals-led-to-acting-career\/","title":{"rendered":"Anya Taylor-Joy explains how her love of animals led to acting career"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"byline\">\n<p>        <time itemprop=\"datePublished\" content=\"2026-07-02\" datetime=\"1782997219\" pubdate=\"\">2 July 2026<\/time>\n    <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.femalefirst.co.uk\/anya-taylor-joy\/\" class=\"exposure-link \" data-linktrack=\"LinkTracker,articleExposure,anya-taylor-joy\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Anya Taylor-Joy<\/a> went into acting because she wanted to &#8220;ride&#8221; a whale.<\/p>\n<p>                            <\/p>\n<p class=\"image-caption landscape\">Anya Taylor-Joy loved Free Willy<\/p>\n<p>The 30-year-old star was fascinated by large animals when she was growing up and after initially setting her sights on a &#8220;made-up job&#8221; studying her favourite creatures, she was then inspired to change direction after watching the 1993 family drama Free Willy, which tells the story of a young orphan and his friendship with a captive orca.<\/p>\n<p>Discussing what she would have done if she hadn&#8217;t been an actress, Anya told Extra: &#8220;I really wanted to be a made-up job, which was a large animal biologist. I really wanted to work with tigers and orcas, and I needed to find a job that like combined those two mammals together. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;So, I think I&#8217;d probably be working in some sort of conservationism or I&#8217;d be a travel journalist.<\/p>\n<p>                      \t\t\t<!-- Dailymotion player (contact: Kutay.vardar@dailymotion.com) --><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I wanted to be an actor because I saw \u2018Free Willy.\u2019 I wanted to be the kid that rode the whale.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\nThe Queen&#8217;s Gambit star can next be seen in Lucky, playing the titular con artist, who goes on the run after a heist goes wrong.<\/p>\n<p>\nBut Anya didn&#8217;t have to undergo much training for the physical scenes because she and director Jonathan Van Tullekin felt it was important to show her character&#8217;s lack of natural athleticism.<\/p>\n<p>\nShe said: \u201cFor Lucky because she&#8217;s not somebody who is naturally that athletic. <\/p>\n<p>\n&#8220;The director Jonathan Van Tulleken and I talked a lot about kind of trying to do everything as badly as you could so that the audience feels a real sense of risk and they feel like you&#8217;re really getting by on the skin of your teeth. So, it was fun.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>\nIt was revealed last month that Anya has joined the cast of The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum as Seren, and she couldn&#8217;t be more excited about the movie, which will be directed by Andy Serkis.<\/p>\n<p>\nShe said: \u201cI am a lethal elf. I&#8217;m so excited. I&#8217;ve been a big fan for a long time and I&#8217;m a huge fantasy nerd. So, the idea that I get to inhabit this world is so thrilling.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!-- Pagination --><\/p>\n<p><!-- playbuzz --><br \/>\n<!-- end playbuzz--><\/p>\n<p><!-- \n\n<div data-cn-project=\"femalefirst\">\n    \n<\/div>\n\n --><\/p>\n<p><!-- Outbrain { date: 2018\/06\/08 } --><br \/>\n<!-- Outbrain { date: 2018\/06\/08 } --><\/p>\n<p>    <!-- Outbrain { date: 2018\/06\/08 } --><br \/>\n    <!-- Outbrain { date: 2018\/06\/08 } --><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.femalefirst.co.uk\/celebrity\/anya-taylor-joy-explains-love-animals-led-acting-career-1446889.html?f=rss\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>2 July 2026 Anya Taylor-Joy went into acting because she wanted to &#8220;ride&#8221; a whale. Anya Taylor-Joy loved Free Willy The 30-year-old star was fascinated by large animals when she was growing up and after initially setting her sights on a &#8220;made-up job&#8221; studying her favourite creatures, she was then inspired to change direction after [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":249711,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[4212],"class_list":{"0":"post-249710","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-make-up","8":"tag-anya-taylor-joy"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249710","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=249710"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/249710\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/249711"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=249710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=249710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entertainment.runfyers.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=249710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}