Sean Baker wrote Anora for Mikey Madison without ever auditioning her
A former competitive horse rider who switched to acting at fourteen, Mikey Madison caught Sean Baker's eye as a Manson follower and in the fifth Scream. He wrote his next lead around her, no audition required. The result, Anora, won the Palme d'Or and earned her the Oscar for Best Actress.
Mikaela Madison Rosberg was born in Los Angeles on March 25, 1999, one of five children of two psychologists, and she has a twin brother. She grew up in the San Fernando Valley, trained seriously as a horseback rider, and was homeschooled after seventh grade. Her viewing diet included Woody Allen, Sofia Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Quentin Tarantino. In interviews she has talked openly about finding social situations hard, struggling with eye contact and being overwhelmed by loud noise.
Short films came first, in 2013. The following year she shot her debut feature, Liza, Liza, Skies Are Grey, which sat unreleased until 2017. Television gave her a steady footing from 2016, when she began six years as Max Fox, a moody teenager, on the FX series Better Things.
Tarantino then cast her as Susan Atkins, a member of the Manson Family, in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which opened at Cannes in 2019. Three years later she played Amber Freeman in the fifth Scream film, singled out by The A.V. Club as a standout. Those two performances were what convinced Baker to build Anora, a Brooklyn stripper and sex worker, specifically for her.
Preparation was hands-on. She studied Russian, learned pole dancing, moved temporarily to Brighton Beach where the story is set, and did her own stunts, including two fights. Anora premiered at Cannes in 2024 and took the Palme d'Or, then brought Madison both the Academy Award and the BAFTA for Best Actress. She stays off social media, describing herself as very sensitive and preferring not to read what strangers say about her, and in 2025 she was cast as the whistleblower Frances Haugen in The Social Reckoning.
Source: Mikey Madison
