Mikey Madison peers into her iPhone, where she’s browsing miniature horses available for adoption. She’s partial to Silver, a gelding in his mid-teens with a Targaryen-blond mane. Before becoming an actor a decade ago, Madison was a competitive horseback rider. The 25-year-old comes from a long line of equestrians with extended family that includes cowboys and a Marlboro Man. “I’ve always been more of a lone wolf,” she muses. “I think that had something to do with wanting to become an actor, to have that deep connection with other people.”
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It’s late July, and we’re drinking iced vanilla lattes on the patio of a café in the San Fernando Valley, where Madison grew up. “I’m curious about people,” she says, smiling in that disarming, doe-eyed way that makes her performance as the titular Anora in Sean Baker’s Palme d’Or winner so captivating. Anora, who goes by Ani, is a stripper from Brighton Beach tasked with entertaining Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), the playboy son of a Russian oligarch. Their chemistry leads to Ivan’s hiring her to be his girlfriend for a week of Dionysian partying across New York and Las Vegas. The film is a kaleidoscopic bender of private jetting, clubbing, railing lines of coke, and sex that’s more absurd than erotic. “I felt very comfortable — maybe a little too comfortable,” Madison says, laughing. She remembers working on one of her sex scenes with Eydelshteyn: “I barely knew Mark, and he was like, ‘I have an idea. I’m going to do a backflip onto the bed, pull off my pants, and my penis is going to go bloop! Do you like this idea? Let’s go tell the director.’ ” In bed one Vegas morning, Ivan laments that he must soon return to Russia, where he is expected to work for the family business. A bright idea takes hold: No one can force him to go back if he’s married to an American citizen. Though Ani is initially cynical about his intentions, “her hopefulness starts to take over,” Madison explains. They rush to a chapel where they are pronounced husband and wife. Afterward, they frolic through Vegas, screaming “That’s my wife!” and “We got married!” Ivan ornaments Ani with a black Russian-sable fur coat and an eye-popping diamond ring. It’s a capitalist fairy tale — until Ivan’s billionaire parents learn he has married a sex worker and send a crew of hired muscle to put an end to it.
When Anora premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, critics raved that Madison’s performance is “towering” (IndieWire) and “a revelatory force of nature” (BBC). Variety predicted she will receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Director Greta Gerwig, who led the Cannes jury that awarded Anora the top prize, described their decision as “heart forward.”
Though she does read reviews of her work, Madison tries to separate each project’s reception from “the crazy, life-changing” experience of making it. “It’s about creating something together,” she says. “I know that whatever I make, for at least one person it will be their favorite thing.” Before she got the part of Ani, Madison had gone from playing an actor’s moody eldest daughter on a cult-favorite television show (Pamela Adlon’s Better Things), to a crazed Manson Family member in Quentin Tarantino’s star-studded Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, to (spoiler alert) a Ghostface killer in Scream (2022).
Madison didn’t have to audition for Anora — director Sean Baker loved her performances in Once Upon a Time and Scream and invited her to develop the character with him. “I said ‘yes’ even before I read the script,” she says, adding that Baker’s Tangerine is one of her favorite films. “I knew whatever he created was something I would want to be a part of.”
Madison comes across as both self-assured and humble, likely the best-case scenario for a Los Angeles–raised child of psychologists. One of five kids, she spent the first few years of her life in Santa Clarita (it was all dirt roads and ponies, she tells me) before her family moved to Woodland Hills. From seventh grade on, “I literally homeschooled myself so I could be at the barn all day with my pony,” she says. But she also loved movies: She grew up watching River Phoenix in Stand by Me, Jennifer Lawrence in The Hunger Games, and Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink. At 14, she decided she would act. “I loved the ritual of getting to the barn and taking care of my horse, but it’s kind of an isolating sport,” she says. “I felt called in another direction.” Her mom signed her up for an acting class, and Madison eventually got a manager. “I was riding and acting for a while,” she says. Leaving riding behind was “painful,” she admits, but she has no regrets. She performed in low-budget short films until 2016, when she booked the role of Max Fox in Better Things, which aired for five seasons. She describes the show as “my introduction to acting, my college, my film school, really everything.” This summer, she’s been back on TV opposite Natalie Portman in the period mystery series Lady in the Lake.
Anora was the most collaborative experience of Madison’s career. “Sean made it clear from the beginning that he wanted to hear all of my ideas,” she says. The film’s opening sequence, in which Ani flirts with potential clients and hangs out with her fellow strippers, was edited down from three “totally improvised” ten-minute shots, says Baker. Ani’s Russian-speaking grandmother — the reason she can speak imperfect Russian with Ivan — bears similarities to Madison’s own grandmother, a Russian-speaking linguist who emigrated from Lithuania to America at 18 after escaping the Holocaust. Madison created Pinterest boards to help develop Ani’s aesthetic, from the delicate strands of red tinsel in her hair, to the vibrant fabrics that cling to her body, to the way she dances with casual devotion. Despite the physical demands of her role, she did not use a body double, and when Baker suggested she get dance training before they began shooting, she had already been doing it for months. She also spent time with sex workers and consumed memoirs and documentaries to convey Ani’s story with authenticity. “I’ve made friends who are dancers. I wanted every aspect of Ani’s career and what she does to be realistic — but also, that’s not her entire life; that’s just her job,” Madison says. She describes Ani as “street smart” and “intuitive,” which makes her fairy tale’s dark turn so wrenching. Madison laughs as she recounts performing her own fight scenes: “I was covered in bruises, I broke my fucking nail off, I busted my knee.” She wanted to feel everything Ani feels, even if it meant scrapping with three burly men.
Though her visibility is growing, Madison remains blissfully off social media. I realize toward the end of our conversation that my habitual internetspeak may have come across as original thoughts I had, especially after I brought up the “mortifying ordeal of being known” meme in reference to feeling exposed when people we know consume our work. “That’s extremely deep and poetic,” she says, sounding almost wistful. She plans to develop some creative projects of her own. “I have a couple of personal stories that I’d love to work with my twin brother on,” she says, but she’s in no rush to jump to the other side of the camera. She’ll wait for the right idea at the right time before making her move. “When it comes to me,” she says, “I’ll be ready.”
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