THIS OUT

world of chess, Anya retreated into the world of her imagination. ‘I didn’t have real contact with other kids, so I’d create witches and magical beings who were my friends,’ she recalls. ‘I’d make up plays about them. But luckily there’s this thing called acting, which means I’m not crazy but I get to do that as a profession.’

She has made a staggering 16 films and appeared in six TV series since her debut in 2015 horror movie The Witch, including a season as gangster’s moll Gina Gray in Peaky Blinders. In 2019 alone she went from playing Jane Austen’s imperious heroine in Emma to starring as an aspiring singer in Edgar Wright’s upcoming horror film Last Night In Soho and then to making The Queen’s Gambit.

She says that before taking on the role of Beth she’d never even played chess. ‘I felt so grateful that I was introduced to this secret world by some of the greats of the game. There’s a beauty in any group of people loving something so much that they want to dedicate their life to it.’

A darker theme in the series is addiction, which Beth develops after being fed tranquillisers at the orphanage, a practice that was used at the time to make children easier to deal with. ‘My brain was blown when I discovered that in the 50s and 60s that was acceptable,’ she says.

Now 24, Anya’s grown immeasurably from the lonely little girl who couldn’t work out which nationality she really was. ‘Now, I’m comfortable just being me.’

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