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Merely a month ago, Mikey Madison admitted in an interview that, despite her leading lady role in one of the most highly lauded films of the year, a months-long awards campaign and nominations for a slew of the industry’s most prestigious trophies, she was still happily flying under the radar. “Lots of people have no idea who I am,” she told GQ in February.
Cut to today and that has all changed, with the 25-year-old the newest addition to Hollywood’s A-list. Sitting among her fellow Best Actress nominees at the Academy Awards on March 2, Madison looked positively gobsmacked when it was revealed she would be taking home the gold statuette for her role in Anora – beating out the universally forecasted Demi Moore.
“I’m still kind of floating in a dreamlike state,” Madison told The Hollywood Reporter the following day. “It was a very, very surreal night – very interesting and, obviously, celebratory and wonderful. But I think that I need time to really digest the magnitude of it.”
Despite what would appear to be a very sudden rise to fame, Madison has actually been at it for over a decade. After giving up her passion of competitive horseriding in pursuit of acting, she landed her first major role in 2015 independent film Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey, which led to parts in TV series Imposters and Better Things – the latter of which she worked on for seven years. However, it was a small part in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood that really kicked things off for the actress.
“Quentin is the director who really welcomed me into the film world. I had been doing primarily television, but I’d always dreamed of working in film and working with someone like Quentin – specifically Quentin – so I’m so grateful for the experience that he gave me and for the character he let me play,” Madison told The Hollywood Reporter. “For a 19-year-old to be able to play such an interesting, rich, fun character like that was really special.”
Special it certainly was, as it was the role that also caught the eye of filmmaker Sean Baker. After then being enamoured with her acting once again in the fifth instalment of the Scream franchise, Baker reached out to Madison for a meeting and, without an audition, offered her the leading role in his next film. And as it turns out, the exotic dancer, Anora, whose romance with the son of an oligarch is threatened when his family comes to town, turned out to be the role that changed everything.
“There were definitely doubts towards myself of, like, ‘Can I pull this off?’” she told Dazed of the role. “‘Am I going to be able to do the amount of work that’s necessary to play this kind of character?’”
After a year of immersing herself in research about sex workers, studying Russian and learning to pole dance, Madison pulled it off in spades, and she’s got the Oscar – and an inundation of interest and offers – to prove it.
“I’ve never had this happen before. It’s a whole new experience. I’m very used to fighting for an audition, trying to kick the door open, for more than a decade now, so it’s a little different,” she explained to The Hollywood Reporter.
As for what’s next, the world – or rather, Hollywood – is Mikey Madison’s oyster. “I’m really excited for the future, and I’m excited for the roles that I might get to play and the people I might get to work with,” she added. “I have lots of dreams and things I’d like to do, but you know, I’m only 25. I feel like I’m a student, in so many ways. I feel like I’m only just learning about all of this.”
