The new Julia Roberts? Meet Mikey Madison – the break-out star of Oscar contender Anora

It was Mikey Madison’s scream that landed her the lead role in Anora, Sean Baker’s latest film and Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or winner earlier this year.

In 2022, Baker, whose work includes The Florida Project and Tangerine, took his seat in the cinema for a screening of Scream, the reboot of Wes Craven’s cult classic slasher film series, starring Jenna Ortega, Jack Quaid and Madison. “Seeing [Mikey] playing different roles, her ability to change her emotions on a dime, her sense of humour, her ability to make brave choices and her amazing scream,” he recalls, “it was at that point that we reached out to her.”

The 25-year-old Los Angeles-born actress does her fair share of screaming in Anora, too. Billed as a fairy tale rom-com, Madison plays the title character, a sex worker who marries a wealthy young Russian. But when his parents get wind of the marriage, they send their goons to annul it, prompting a cat and mouse chase that is hilarious, heart-wrenching and entirely deserving of that Palme d’Or.

She is the beating heart of the story, so the success of the film will surely propel Madison forward to further triumphs. “I was floored that Sean wanted to meet me, but I wasn’t about to question it,” she says of her casting. “I immediately said yes. I felt like the luckiest actress in the world that he wanted to work with me.”

Before Scream, Madison’s roster of film work was sparse. She had a small role in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood, leading many to joke about the film’s strangely prescient casting of then unknown soon-to-be-stars (Sydney Sweeney, Austin Butler and Margaret Qualley also appear), but that’s about it. Anora really is poised to be her big break.

There may well be parallels between Baker’s feisty heroine and Garry Marshall’s brassy Vivian Ward, played by Julia Roberts, in Pretty Woman, but this isn’t a saccharine story of sex worker done good. Instead, it’s a Sean Baker story and Madison gets to flex a real range of acting muscles.

“Sean has dedicated his career to destigmatising sex work and telling stories about marginalised people,” Madison says. “He’s always done it in a very honest way — and in a funny way, too. He deals with a lot of dark subject matter, but he’s constantly flipping that on its head and injecting it with humour. So I trusted Sean completely and knew he would be a true collaborator with me.”

Anora is in cinemas this weekend