Anya Taylor-Joy’s family helped her deal with bullies who made fun of her looks growing up.
“The Menu” actress said on Thursday’s episode of “The Drew Barrymore Show” that she wasn’t always “embraced” for her unique looks while growing up.
“I was very, very lucky with my parents because when I was bullied for my looks my mom always said you look at the inside of somebody… you look at the inside of somebody you don’t look at class, you don’t look at anything like that,” the “Queen’s Gambit” star, 26, told Barrymore.
“You don’t look at what they do for a job, it’s just do you like that person’s heart? And I really have to give a big shout out to my mom for that because it was really helpful,” Taylor-Joy continued.
The actress — who secretly married boyfriend Malcolm McRae over the summer — previously spoke out about her isolated childhood, saying her only friends were “the characters in the ‘Harry Potter’ books.”
“I spent the first two years in England playing hand-clap games with plants — if you slap them hard enough, they clap back — and learning how to read,” Taylor-Joy told Entertainment Tonight last year about moving from Buenos Aires, Argentina to the UK as a kid.
She continued, “That was my existence. I didn’t hang out with other kids. I was clearly a very normal child.”
Although the “Last Night in Soho” star went on to recall being made fun of for having wide-set eyes and even being stuffed into lockers, she refuses to give the tales anymore “airtime.”
However, her saving grace ended up being entering the entertainment industry where she finally felt like she fit in.
“I needed to believe in a place where I could be valued and appreciated, and actually have something to contribute rather than constantly feeling like, ‘What is wrong with me, and why do I not fit in?'” she told the outlet.
While the actress had a hard time forming relationships in her younger years, she was able to finally find her partner in crime in McRae.
“I’ve finally found someone who will happily sit in silence with me reading. We’re basically 80 years old and 7 at the same time, and it works really well,” she gushed to British Vogue in March.
The actress and 28-year-old musician first sparked engagement rumors in June after the blonde bombshell was spotted with a diamond sparkler on that finger.
