Anya Taylor-Joy Once Dyed Her Hair Pink In A Chipotle Bathroom
Anya Taylor-Joy possesses an aura of unmistakable glamour — whether she’s decked out in full haute couture, wearing a Dior gown for a night in at home, or playing a 2000s-era teen right from our own memory. But she’s also proven her punk rock chops by pulling a youthful beauty stunt that would have gotten many grounded for weeks. While most us have used the public bathrooms for the occasional day-to-evening costume change, young Taylor-Joy dyed her hair pink on a whim in a bathroom at a Chipotle.
“I literally came in from the airport and I saw Ricky’s and I was like, Yes, pink hair—that’s what I need,” she said in a wide-ranging cover interview with Vanity Fair. She was 14, and was in New York City unaccompanied for a two-week-long film workshop. Naturally, she decided to use the time away from home most constructively.
Ricky’s, for the uninitiated, was a New York-based chain beauty supply shop, which specialized in products that were slightly rougher around the edges than, say, Sephora. It was especially popular with drag queens and artists. Many a rebellious teen has bought their first jar of Manic Panic at Ricky’s; Taylor-Joy unknowingly joined legions of kids who cite Ricky’s as their first foray into fashion and beauty exploration.
Luckily, Taylor-Joy’s parents didn’t seem to be too angry. “My mother raised me to always be looking at things inside of people rather than their outside,” she said, indicating that outward appearances, pink hair and all, mattered less than being a good person. At 16, Taylor-Joy wrote a persuasive essay to her parents, explaining why she wanted to leave school and pursue acting full-time. It must have worked because a couple of years later she appeared in her debut film, The VVitch. The A24 film was critically-acclaimed and won several independent film awards.
As fate would have it, she also had pink hair on the cover of W back in 2017. Though, that time it was decidedly not done in a burrito bowl restaurant bathroom.
