Anya Taylor-Joy burst onto the scene with her performance in A24’s The VVitch, which won her rave reviews when it premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. In his debut feature, writer/director Robert Eggers tells the story of a pilgrim family that is besieged by a supernatural force. She went on to win the Breakthrough Actor Award at The Gotham Awards and Best Female Newcomer Award at The Empires for her performance.

Earlier this year, she captivated audiences by playing the role of the title role of Emma, opposite Johnny Flynn in Autumn de Wilde’s critically acclaimed adaptation of the classic Jane Austen novel for Focus Features.

Taylor-Joy is currently shooting The Northman, Robert Eggers’ Viking revenge saga set in Iceland at the turn of the 10th century, opposite Nicole Kidman for New Regency.

This fall, she will star in The Queen’s Gambit for Netflix. Based on the novel by Walter Tevis, the limited drama series is a coming-of-age story that explores the true cost of genius. Abandoned and entrusted to a Kentucky orphanage in the late 1950s, a young Beth Harmon (Anya Taylor-Joy) discovers an astonishing talent for chess. Haunted by her personal demons and fueled by a cocktail of narcotics and obsession, Beth transforms into an impressively skilled and glamorous outcast while determined to conquer the traditional boundaries established in the male-dominated world of competitive chess. The Queen’s Gambit is directed and co-written by two-time Academy Award nominee Scott Frank and executive produced by Frank, William Horberg and Allan Scott, who also co-created the series.

She will also star in Edgar Wright’s psychological thriller, Last Night in Soho, which will be released in April 2021 by Focus Features.

Taylor-Joy’s extensive filmography includes Split and Glass, the second and final installments in M. Night Shyamalan’s Unbreakable trilogy opposite James McAvoy, Focus Features’ critically acclaimed Thoroughbreds with Olivia Cooke, the animated musical adventure comedy film, Playmobil: The Movie for StudioCanal, FOX’s Morgan, Marvel’s The New Mutants and Amazon’s Radioactive.

On television, she starred in the BBC/PBS Masterpiece miniseries The Miniaturist, voiced the character of ‘Brea’ in Netflix’s critically acclaimed fantasy series, The Dark Crystal, and starred in the fifth season of the gangster period epic Peaky Blinders.

In 2017, Taylor-Joy was nominated for EE Bafta’s Rising Star Award.

Marielle Heller is an award-winning director, writer and actress who has built an impressive and multifaceted career carefully crafting a unique voice that has earned her critical acclaim on a number of projects. Her meticulous and humanistic directing style is depicted in her most recent film, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which stars Tom Hanks as Mr. Rogers and earned him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. She previously directed the three-time Academy Award-nominated film, Can You Ever Forgive Me?, starring Melissa McCarthy and Richard E. Grant, just three years after the release of her highly lauded directorial debut, The Diary of a Teenage Girl, which earned her an Indie Spirit Award. In the development of that film, she was the proud recipient of the Sundance Screenwriting and Directing Fellowships.

Heller also recently launched Defiant by Nature, a production company focused on telling stories that uplift, inspire and entertain while simultaneously shining bright lights on women and non-binary creators. The company, which has a first look deal with Big Beach to create television projects, is currently developing a TV mini-series based on the This American Life episode, “Five Women.”

Moses Ingram is making her television debut alongside Anya Taylor-Joy in Scott Frank‘s Netflix limited series, The Queen’s Gambit. She will next play the role of “Lady Macduff” opposite Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand in Macbeth for A24, directed by Joel Coen.

A Baltimore native, Ingram attended the Yale School of Drama where she was the winner of the 2018 Princess Grace Award—(Grace Le Vine Theater Award) and the Herschel Williams Prize upon graduating. While at Yale, she was cast in several productions including Twelfth Night (Viola), The Winter’s Tale (Perdita), School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (Paulina), and Blues for Miss Lucille (Lucille). Other credits include In the Red and Brown Water (Yale Rep), Detroit 67 and Building the Wall (Chautauqua Theatre Company). Ingram attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, and in 2015, won the National Society of Arts and Letters DC chapter theater award.

Scott Frank’s screenplays include Little Man Tate, Dead Again, Malice, Heaven’s Prisoners, Get Shorty, Out of Sight, Minority Report, The Interpreter, The Lookout (also directed), Marley & Me, The Wolverine, Walk Among the Tombstones (also directed), Logan, the Netflix limited series, Godless (also directed) and The Queen’s Gambit (also directed).

Out of Sight and Logan were both nominated for Academy Awards for Best Adapted Screenplay. Out of Sight won the Writers Guild of America Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America as well as Best Screenplay awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the Boston Society of Film Critics. Logan was also nominated for a Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. Get Shorty was nominated for both a Golden Globe and a Writers Guild Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.

His directorial debut, The Lookout, won the Independent Spirit award for “Best First Feature.” Godless was nominated for 12 Emmy awards, including nominations for writing and directing, as well as a nomination from the Directors and Writers Guilds. Mr. Frank is currently adapting the Maria Doria Russell novel, The Sparrow, into a limited series for director Johan Renck (Chernobyl) and F/X. Mr. Frank serves as an Executive Producer on the STARZ series Panther Baby based on Jamal Joseph’s autobiography about his life in The Black Panthers. He will direct the pilot and episodes of Twin Territories, a western series based on the life of African American lawman Bass Reeves for Amazon. He is also overseeing the writing and will direct episodes on Dept. Q, a British series for Left Bank (The Crown), based on the bestselling crime novels by Danish author, Jussi Adler Olsen. Mr. Frank and Tom Fontana have co-written a French series, Monsieur Spade, about the fictional detective, Sam Spade, living out his later years as an expat in the south of France in the early 1960’s.

Mr. Frank’s first novel, Shaker, was published by Knopf in 2015.

Jodie Foster’s stunning performances as a rape survivor in The Accused and as Special Agent Clarice Starling in the hit thriller The Silence of the Lambs earned her two Academy Awards ® for Best Actress and a reputation as one of the most critically acclaimed actresses of her Generation.

Foster began her career at age three, appearing as “The Coppertone Girl” in the television commercial. She then went on to become a regular on several television series, including Mayberry RFD, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, My Three Sons, and Paper Moon. She made her feature debut in Napoleon and Samantha when she was eight years old.

But it was her role in Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1975), which brought her to the audience’s attention, and her powerful portrayal of a streetwise teenager in Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver (1976) that won her widespread critical praise and international attention. Foster appeared in a total of four films in 1976, Bugsy Malone, Echoes of Summer, Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, and Taxi Driver, which were all presented at the Cannes Film Festival. Alan Parker’s Bugsy Malone earned her an Italian Comedy Award.

In total, Foster has appeared in more than 40 films. Upcoming, Foster will star alongside Benedict Cumberbatch and Shailene Woodley in Kevin Macdonald’s Untitled Film based on the 2015 memoir Guantanamo Diary by Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Most recently she starred in Drew Pearce’s action-thriller Hotel Artemis. Prior to that her films include Elysium opposite Matt Damon for director Neil Blomkamp; Carnage for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination; Nim’s Island with Gerard Butler; The Brave One for director Neil Jordan for which she received a Golden Globe Award nomination; Inside Man with Denzel Washington and Clive Owen; the box-office hit Flightplan; Jean Pierre Jeunet’s French language film, A Very Long Engagement; David Fincher’s box-office success, Panic Room; Anna and the King for director Andy Tenant, Contact for director Robert Zemeckis; Nell opposite Liam Neeson; the comedy Maverick opposite Mel Gibson and James Garner and the romantic drama Sommersby opposite Richard Gere.

Other select motion picture credits include Woody Allen’s stylized black and white comedy Shadows and Fog; Siesta; Stealing Home; Five Corners; as well as earlier films Tom Sawyer; Freaky Friday; Adrian Lyne’s Foxes; Tony Richardson’s The Hotel New Hampshire and Claude Chabrol’s The Blood of Others, for which the multi-lingual Foster looped all of her own dialogue in French.

For her role in The Silence of the Lambs, Foster was also awarded a Golden Globe® Award, a British Academy Award, a New York Film Critics Award and a Chicago Film Critics Award. Foster received her first Oscar® nomination and awards from the National Society of Film Critics and the Los Angeles Film Critics for her role in Taxi Driver. She also became the only American actress to win two separate awards in the same year from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts – Best Supporting Actress and Best Newcomer honoring her performances in both Taxi Driver and Bugsy Malone.

In 2013 she was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award from the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for Lifetime Achievement. Additionally, in 2016 she was awarded with the Stanley Kubrick Britannia Award for Excellence in Film from BAFTA Los Angeles.

In addition to her acting, Foster has always had a keen interest in the art of filmmaking. Foster made her motion picture directorial debut in 1991 with the highly acclaimed Little Man Tate, in which she also starred. In 1995, Foster directed her second film, Home for the Holidays, which she also produced. The film starred Holly Hunter, Anne Bancroft and Robert Downey Jr. In 2011 she directed The Beaver, which starred Mel Gibson, Jennifer Lawrence and Anton Yelchin and Foster. In 2016 Foster directed the thriller Money Monster which starred George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Jack O’Connell.

Upcoming, Foster will direct, co-produce and star in an English-language remake of Women At War, the spirited and eccentric eco-thriller that Iceland submitted for the Foreign Language competition at the 91st Academy Awards.

Foster made her television directorial debut helming episodes of three highly acclaimed Netflix series – Orange is the New Black, House of Cards and Black Mirror. Foster received an Emmy Award Nomination and a Director’s Guild Award Nomination for “Best Directing in a Comedy Series” for Orange is the New Black and a Director’s Guild Award Nomination for “Best Directing in a Drama Series” for House of Cards.

Foster founded Egg Pictures in 1992 and the company produced Nell (1994), for which Foster earned an Academy Award® nomination for Best Actress; Home for the Holidays (1995); the Showtime telefilm The Baby Dance (1998) which received a Peabody Award, four Emmy ® Award nominations and three Golden Globe ® Award nominations; as well as USA Films’ Waking the Dead, directed by Keith Gordon starring Billy Crudup and Jennifer Connelly. In 1996, Egg presented the award-winning French film Hate (L’Haine) in the United States.

Foster and Egg Pictures also produced The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys (2001).

Foster graduated with honors from Yale University in 1985, earning a B.A. in literature.