Mikey Madison has just become the youngest actress to win the Best Actress Oscar in more than three decades for her role in Anora.
The win was an upset after Demi Moore swept the category in previous events of this awards season (aside from the BAFTAs, where Madison took home the win) and many Oscars viewers have all been asking two questions:
Who is Mikey Madison? And where did she come from?
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Well, it was her minor role in Quentin Tarantino’s 2019 film Once Upon A Time In Hollywood that put her on the path to stardom.
Anora writer, director, editor and producer Sean Baker saw the film and was captivated by the performance – so much so, he created the role of Anora specifically for her.
Keep reading to find out how Madison ended up as the lead of the Oscar-winning film and everything else you need to know about her journey from growing up a shy kid in LA to becoming one of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood.
Mikey Madison’s life growing up
Mikey Madison – whose real name is Mikaela Madison Rosberg – was raised in Los Angeles, however she never intended to end up in Hollywood.
Both of her parents are psychologists and she grew up used to sharing the spotlight with four siblings, including a twin brother.
She told The Cut she spent the first few years of her life in Santa Clarita, where it was “all dirt roads and ponies”, before her parents moved to the Woodland Hills area.
In seventh grade she dropped out of school, instead opting for homeschooling so she could spend more time on the career path she thought she would follow – horse riding.
In her own words, Madison was “the weird horse girl”.
She told Wonderland her twin brother would pretend they weren’t siblings to avoid being associated with her while she was still in traditional schooling.
“He’s since apologised,” she explained.
“At some point, I grew into myself a bit more. But for a long time, I was the weird horse girl.”
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Madison homeschooled herself for years, now saying she did it all so that she could “be at the barn all day with my pony”.
She started out with a horse named Tinkerbell before moving onto another named Bubbles, explaining she found solace in their company.
You see, following her dreams of being an equestrian wasn’t the sole reason Madison left traditional schooling.
If you’ve seen any of her films, you’ll know Madison as brash, unapologetic and loud, but her real life persona is quite the opposite, and as a child she even suffered from the kind of shyness that left her feeling debilitated.
She told Dazed she would feel “physically nauseous” before heading into school each morning.
“I think socially, I really struggled in that environment,” she said.
“And then in terms of education, the way that the schools were teaching wasn’t the way that I learned.”
She shared that horse riding was where she found solace and began to grow her confidence, but she always felt a pull toward acting.
At the age of 14, she decided to listen to her gut.
”I was riding and acting for a while,” she said, adding that eventually making the decision to leave riding behind was “painful” but she has no regrets.
“It was hard for me to step aside from that, but I had to choose – I’m an all-or-nothing person,” she told Wonderland.
“If I do something, it needs to be my whole life. I don’t know if that’s healthy, but it’s true.”
Her mum signed her up for an acting class and it wasn’t long before Madison had herself a manager.
Jumping into the deep end helped the star overcome her shyness. She started off acting in independent short films until 2016 when she scored a role in the TV show Better Things.
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Mikey Madison’s career
Madison played Max Fox for all five seasons of the show and described the experience as ”my introduction to acting, my college, my film school, really everything”.
From there, her next big project was in Quentin Tarantino’s star-studded Once Upon A Time in Hollywood.
She played a follower of cult leader Charles Manson in the film, revealing she got into character before she even secured the job.
Madison told late night host Jimmy Kimmel that Tarantino is her “absolute hero”, revealing his films were one of the main reasons she got into acting in the first place.
Watch the video above.
“I got this audition, I think I was like 19 years old, and I was like, ‘this is my one opportunity to meet Quentin Tarantino, so I’m just gonna go all out’,” she began.
“I did a lot of research into the Manson Family, and I found out that they would take a lot of acid trips together, so I painted this painting like my character was on this wild acid trip and I wrote a very dramatic poem to Charles Manson on the back.
“I cut off a piece of my hair … and I very dramatically performed it to Quentin and I guess he liked it.”
She was invited back for a chemistry read, and when she walked into Tarantino’s office she saw her painting hanging on the wall.
“That’s how I knew that I got the role,” she said.
She got on set as a 19-year-old new to the world of film, rubbing shoulders with some of Hollywood’s biggest names including Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and Margot Robbie.
She only had a small part in the movie though. Her role was essentially to die a dramatic and gruesome death at the end.
”My character had a dog food can thrown at her face, was attacked by a pit bull, ran through a sliding glass door, tripped into a pool, and finally was set on fire,” she joked during the BAFTAs I’m An Actor segment.
Despite her show-stopping performance in the film, Madison’s shyness almost consumed her right before cameras began to roll.
”I remember my face got hot. Do you know that feeling, like hot and tingly? And I could feel my heartbeat here,” she told Dazed, signaling to her chest.
“But then I was like, ‘No, the character needs this. She has to run towards this person with all of her energy and let some crazy sound out. This is who she is in that moment.’ And so I just forced myself to do it.”
And thankfully she did, because it was her performance in that film that caught the attention of Anora writer, editor, producer and director, Sean Baker.
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“She comes out of nowhere in the last 15 minutes of the film,” Sean Baker told GQ of Madison’s performance in the 2019 film.
“And I’m like, ‘Oh my God, who is that?’ She has such an impactful persona and performance in that film. I saw it again because I really liked the film, and then I went back a third time simply to watch her scenes.
“There was something unique about her. I think that she had something different from what you would see Hollywood normally producing.”
Baker kept Madison filed away for a project he had in mind for the future, then when he saw her performance as masked killer hiding in plain sight in 2022’s Scream, he reached out.
The acclaimed director called Madison’s agent to pitch the idea of creating what would later become Anora around her as the main character, and asked if he could catch up with the actress for coffee.
“He pitched me this idea for, at the time, a Russian mafia film. He asked me if I wanted to do it. I said yes,” Madison told W Magazine.
Baker didn’t audition a single other actress for the role.
A year after their first meeting, Baker and Madison were in New York together, beginning to shoot.
The actress had done all she possibly could to prepare for the role of Anora (or Ani, as she’s referred it throughout the film), a young sex worker who meets and marries the son of a Russian oligarch.
Madison had her dad install a stripper pole in her home; she spent time at clubs watching the dancers to see how they move and flirt with customers; she spent two months in the neighbourhood the movie was filmed in to familiarise herself before the rest of the crew arrived; she worked on nailing her thick Brooklyn accent; she even learnt Russian.
The actress said Baker wanted to collaborate with her on the film, allowing her to really sink her teeth into the role.
“Sean gave me so much free range to build this character from the ground up,” she said.
“He allowed me to be involved in so many different aspects of making this film: the costumes, the hair, and the makeup.”
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She told Dazed that working with Baker was unlike any other experience she’s had on set, saying he respected her work and that the two of them were entirely on the same page creatively.
“This experience has completely changed the way that I want to work in the future,” she said.
In May 2024, the film premiered at Cannes International Film Festival where it received a seven-and-a-half-minute standing ovation and won the top prize, the Palme d’Or.
That was where the awards season chatter begun, with many predicting Madison would sweep the Best Actress category
However, as things kicked off she found herself in second place more often than not.
So by the time the 2025 Oscars rolled around Madison, and Anora as a whole, went in as underdogs.
But, the Academy delivered a shock twist to the 2025 awards season with the film taking home a total of five wins, including Best Picture and Madison’s Best Actress.
“This is very surreal. I grew up in Los Angeles but Hollywood always felt so far away from me, so to be here standing in this room today is really incredible,” she said as she accepted the award for Best Actress, seemingly still trying to come to terms with the fact that her name had just been called.
“I want to honour and recognise the sex worker community,” she added.
“I will continue to support and be an ally… the women I’ve had the privilege of meeting from that community has been one of the highlights of this entire incredible experience.”
At 25 years old, Madison is the youngest to win in her category since Marlee Matlin took home the award aged 21 in 1986, and the Anora star is now well on her way to stardom.
But, despite her rising profile and her tendency to play tenacious outspoken characters, she’s still the same down-to-earth, shy girl who once found comfort in the company of her horses.
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Talking to the Hollywood Authentic about what roles she’ll take on next after skyrocketing to the top of her game, Madison had an answer most in her position would never even dream of.
“I just want to make enough money to have a ranch for my mini pony rescue,” she laughed.
“That’s really just what I want enough money to have.”
So maybe a return to horse riding is still on the cards?
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