Why Mikey Madison, Star Of Anora, Looks So Familiar

By the end of 2024, Mikey Madison's name was everywhere. After a mesmerizing turn in Sean Baker's "Anora" as the titular sex worker, Madison found herself on just about every Oscar predictions list around. "Anora" even took home the Palme d'Or at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival, demonstrating the incredible talent Madison brought to the part. "It was quite surreal," she told Vogue Singapore. "It had been my dream to go to that festival since I became an actor, and that was the first time I'd ever been to any film festival!" Following her breakout role, Madison's been interviewed by the likes of Vogue, Interview Magazine, and Esquire with interest surrounding her career and personal life growing by the minute.

Although "Anora" marks Madison's first major leading role in an Oscar-contender, she's actually been acting for years — and has even appeared in a few projects you've probably seen. From "Better Things" to a memorable cameo in "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" directed by Quentin Tarantino, here's why Mikey Madison may look familiar to you.

Many actors begin their careers with a few short films, and while it's probably unlikely that you've seen any of Mikey Madison's, she did get her start with three shorts of her own. Madison began acting when she was a teenager. As she told Esquire, she chose acting over horseback riding, which had been a tradition in her family. "I just had a pull towards wanting some deeper connection with other people or wanting to experience something more emotional than what I was doing," Madison said of her choice. "To me, that decision was simultaneously easy but also painful. I felt that if I started acting, then I'd have to commit myself 100% to it, and I couldn't do that if I was still committed to horseback riding, which is very time-consuming."

Pretty soon, the short film roles started calling. In 2013, Madison appeared in "Retirement," a short directed by Paul Torres, and "Pani's Box," another short by Alexa Shackelford. The following year, the young actor appeared in "Bound For Greatness," a Jimmy Gadd short that also starred Karen Gillan.

Next up for Mikey Madison was the 2015 film "Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey," a coming-of-age film by Terry Sanders about a road trip during the 1960s. Madison starred opposite TikTok star Sean H. Scully in the rom-com. 

As Scully told Star Shine Magazine, working with Madison was a "joy." "I love Mikey," he said, adding, "One thing that I wanted to do was to establish a connection and a friendship with Mikey, and I feel like we did that. We became very, very good friends just on set and seeing her every day. She's very lovely to work with."

For Madison, acting in films proved to be a way to break past her natural shyness. "I feel there's so many crazy things that I would've never been able to do, but under the safety net of being in a movie and I was able to," she told C-Heads in 2018. "But, I think that's what attracted me the most, was being able to feel things. Especially me being so shy and reserved, I felt that I needed a way to let things out."

In 2016, Mikey Madison landed her first big role in a major production when she was cast as Max in FX's "Better Things." As Max, she played the eldest daughter of Pamela Adlon's Sam. As Madison told Esquire, she started getting bigger parts like this one after she let go of some of her perfectionism. "When I finally gave myself permission to fail or to embarrass myself or to not be perfect is when things started happening for me," she explained. 

As she told IMDb, booking the job as a pilot was "a dream come true" for the young actor. In fact, "Better Things" proved to be the role that really transformed her approach to acting — and indeed, to life itself. As she told The Cut, the show was "my introduction to acting, my college, my film school, really everything." She starred on the show for five season until 2022. "It was a huge part of my life," she shared with IMDb. "And everything that introduced me to acting was from that show."

In 2018, Mikey Madison's career continued to blossom. The actor booked a role in the film "Nostalgia" by Mark Pellington which she appeared in alongside the likes of Jon Hamm, Ellen Burstyn, and Catherine Keener. Then, she landed a role in "Monster" which saw her sharing the screen with A$AP Rocky and John David Washington.

Also that year, Madison appeared in two episodes of Bravo's "Imposters" as the younger teen version of Inbar Lavi's Maddie, portraying the character as she begins her life as a con artist. But not all fans were thrilled with Madison's appearance in the show. "I still don't think teen Maddie is good casting in the sense of she doesn't look a whole lot like Inbar Lavi," wrote one fan for Spoiler TV. 

As her career continued, Madison gained more confidence. "I just recently became very confident in myself, and I think it's something that a lot of women struggle with," she told C-Heads. "Recently, I've just been accepting myself and that's been really amazing."

Mikey Madison landed a life-changing role in 2018 when she was cast as a Manson girl in Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood." "It was so surreal it felt unreal, like, I remember asking my mom, like, 'Is this really happening?'" Madison recalled to IMDb of the role. After all, the actor had been a long time Tarantino fan, having grown up watching his films. In fact, she apparently still had the ticket stub from his 2015 film "The Hateful Eight" in her wallet when she auditioned for the movie.

Apparently, the audition was a little eccentric. The team had said she could do "whatever" she wanted for the audition. "I brought in a painting that I made in character," Madison recalled to The Hollywood Reporter. "It was as if the Manson girls had made this psychedelic painting during one of their acid trips, and I even sewed a piece of my hair into the painting." In the film, Madison ended up playing one of Charles Manson's disciples who ends up dying in a gruesome fiery death scene.

"Literally, he is my hero," she gushed to The Guardian. "For it to be my first big movie role, that was completely unbelievable and the greatest entry into film for me. But it was also, 'OK, well, f***, I just worked with my hero at 19. What am I going to do now?'"

Mikey Madison's next brush with stardom came in 2022 when she was cast in "Scream" playing Amber, who just so happened to also be the masked killer, Ghostface. Funnily enough, her character in "Scream" was also set on fire, just like her character in "Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood." "Honestly, I saw them as two completely different characters with that random coincidence," she said to The Hollywood Reporter. "They even debated changing my character's death, but we ultimately just kept it in."

Joining the long-established "Scream" franchise during the COVID-19 pandemic was, as Madison told IMDb, "the biggest blessing." She added, "And it had been, you know, a good amount of time since I had worked, I think maybe even, like, two years or something like that, and so I was like, 'This sounds like the most fun.'"

Not only was the project fun, it also proved to be career-changing. Sean Baker, director of "Anora," saw the film and found himself drawn to Madison — so much so that he offered her the lead in his next film. The rest, as they say, is history.

After her appearance in "Once Upon a Time... In Hollywood" in 2019, Mikey Madison went on to star in her second rom-com, "It Takes Three," in 2021. The film followed a man who asked his friend, Cy, to pose as him online in order to win over his crush. Madison played Kat, a girl who likes Cy. In 2023, she also starred as River, a young single mother who is forced to become a police informant in "All Souls."

Although these projects weren't huge Hollywood productions, they were scripts that spoke to Madison. "I've done so many Indie films where the payment wasn't close to my rate, it's not about the money right now," she told C-Heads. "I've mostly done independent films, I think it's because most of the stories I gravitate toward are not really big studio budget stories. So definitely, the most important thing for me is the people and the story."

In addition to her star-making role in "Anora" in 2024, Mikey Madison also appeared in Apple TV+'s "Lady in the Lake" alongside Natalie Portman and Moses Ingram, after being cast in the project during recasting back in 2022. Madison played Judith, a woman who joins forces with Portman's Maddie to solve the case of the missing Tessie. "I love Alma [Har'el] as a filmmaker and Natalie is one of my favorite actresses, I think she's amazing," Madison told Apple TV+ (via YouTube) of the project on the red carpet. "I think it's full of surprises, it's beautifully shot, Alma's a visionary."

Some fans of the show found themselves suspecting Madison's character thanks to her history of playing villains. "With a track record like hers, she should already be considered a suspect in just about every show or movie centered around murder, which is exactly what 'Lady in the Lake' is," one fan wrote on ScreenRant.

Now that Madison's turn in "Anora" is officially out in the world, we can bet that people will start looking at her in a whole new (and less villainous) light.

If you want to learn about more rising Hollywood stars, check out Why Amelia From The Perfect Couple Looks So Familiar