Why Isn’t Anyone Talking About the Real Star of ‘Furiosa’?

The true star of Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga isn’t even on the poster. It isn’t Anya Taylor-Joy, who plays the title character, nor is it Chris Hemsworth, although both give triumphant performances. You may not even recognize the name of the actor who runs away with George Miller’s fiery Fury Road prequel. But she’s in over half of the film, and she, too, plays the titular Furiosa: Alyla Browne.

Taylor-Joy’s Furiosa, touted as the film’s star, only appears in the back half of the vengeful anti-hero’s origin story. Up until around an hour or so into the film, Furiosa is played by Browne, who stars as the younger version of the character. For the first part of the movie, we watch Furiosa as a child and adolescent struggle to make her way back home through the wasteland after she’s kidnapped by a band of stragglers who work for the evil Dementus (Hemsworth).

This helps to explain why Taylor-Joy only had a reported 30-ish lines of dialogue in the film—I was shocked to see she’s really hardly in the movie at all. Well, perhaps that’s hyperbole. But to only have your star in half of the film, to me, is jarring! She and Browne split the acting duties equally; therefore, we should be talking more about Browne’s performance, especially considering how tremendous it is.

Read more at The Daily Beast.