‘Dune’ Star Anya Taylor-Joy Learned a Skill for Her Latest Role That Most People Will Never Master
Acting careers come with plenty of perks, but one of the more underrated ones is the sheer range of specialized skills performers pick up along the way, abilities most people will simply never have a reason to learn. Anya Taylor-Joy has spent her career quietly stacking up an unusual résumé of these skills, and her latest project adds another genuinely rare one to the list.
That project is ‘Lucky’, Apple TV’s seven-episode crime thriller based on Marissa Stapley’s novel, which premiered on July 15 and wrapped its run on August 19. Taylor-Joy stars as Luciana “Lucky” Armstrong, a lifelong con artist forced to go on the run after a multimillion-dollar heist goes sideways, pursued simultaneously by an FBI agent played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and a ruthless crime boss played by Annette Bening.
According to Far Out Magazine, Taylor-Joy has picked up a genuinely rare skill for her roles over the years: learning to handle a sniper rifle. That training traces back to her earlier Apple TV+ project ‘The Gorge’, the 2025 sci-fi horror romance in which she starred opposite Miles Teller and Sigourney Weaver, playing an elite sniper stationed on one side of a mysterious, monster-filled chasm.
In ‘The Gorge’, Taylor-Joy’s character Drasa and Teller’s Levi are hired specifically for their exceptional sniper skills, tasked with guarding opposite towers of the gorge while forbidden from making contact with one another, a setup that eventually gives way to an unlikely long-distance romance. That kind of role naturally demanded genuine weapons training rather than simply faking it on camera, giving Taylor-Joy hands-on experience with a skillset most audiences would assume is purely a visual effect.
That willingness to physically commit to unusual roles has become something of a throughline across Taylor-Joy’s filmography. From her breakout horror performances in ‘The Witch’ and ‘Split’ to her Golden Globe-winning turn as a chess prodigy in ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, and later as the title character in George Miller’s ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’, she’s consistently gravitated toward roles that ask for more than just emotional range.
‘Lucky’ continues that pattern in a different direction, leaning less on physical combat skills and more on Lucky’s psychological command over every situation she’s thrown into. Critics have praised the performance specifically for how it channels the same restless intelligence Taylor-Joy brought to ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, with reviewers describing her character as one of television’s toughest and smartest fugitives in recent memory.
Between the sniper training picked up for ‘The Gorge’ and the con artist’s toolkit she embodies in ‘Lucky’, Taylor-Joy’s recent run of Apple TV+ projects has given her the chance to build out an eclectic set of skills far removed from the acting craft itself. It’s a pattern that’s become a genuine talking point among fans following her career, curious to see what unconventional expertise she’ll pick up next.
With ‘Lucky’ now complete and continuing to draw strong reviews, Taylor-Joy’s growing list of specialized, role-driven skills only adds another layer of intrigue to whatever she takes on next.
What do you think is the coolest skill Anya Taylor-Joy has learned for a role?
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