NEED TO KNOW
Mikey Madison is opening up about life since becoming an Academy Award winner earlier this year.
“I feel like everything around me has changed, and I think that’s increasing my need to withdraw into myself,” said the actress, 26, in a new interview with Vogue Italia.
“I’m extremely introverted, but I also have a big desire for adventure,” added Madison. “It’s a conflict I’ve always felt, but it’s gotten worse lately.”
For her performance in the titular role of 2024 Sean Baker hit Anora, Madison earned the Best Actress Oscar, triumphing in a tight race with fellow award season contenders including Demi Moore and Fernanda Torres. At 25 years old in March, Madison became the first Gen-Z person to earn an acting Oscar and the ninth-youngest winner in the category.
Per Vogue Italia, the Better Things alum keeps her statuette at her house — “along with a cat, three dogs, and a vinyl collection” — outside of Los Angeles in the Valley, not far from where she grew up.
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These days, continued Madison, “It’s as if I’m now aware of how I’m perceived. I’m not on social media, I never regret missing a party or a dinner, but it seems like society is forcing me to ask myself, ‘Should I do it too to be happy? To be fair?’”
She added, “We pretend to be someone we’re not to make others feel comfortable. I think shyness should be considered a form of poetry.”
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In the past few months, Madison’s name has come up in casting rumors about A24’s Masque of the Red Death and Aaron Sorkin’s The Social Network Part II; Variety also reported that she passed on the upcoming Ryan Gosling Star Wars installment. The only confirmed project on Madison’s schedule is Reptilia, a mermaid thriller from Alejandro Landes Echavarría costarring Kirsten Dunst, reported in May.
“It’s as if Sean Baker plucked me out of the darkness,” said the actress of her whirlwind success with Anora. “I still feel like I’m at the beginning of my career; I feel like the time has come to play characters that terrify me. I need to read a script and be afraid.”
Courtesy of NEON
Reflecting on what she aspires to on and off camera, Madison told Vogue Italia, “It’s wonderful to meet people who are at the peak of their careers and choose to remain kind. That’s exactly what I want to be.”
She also said, “I admire those who nurture their ‘sense of playfulness.’ I’d like to be indulgent with myself, too. My mom said to me just the other day: ‘If only you could see yourself the way you see others, you’d be so much happier.’”
