‘Dune’ Star Anya Taylor-Joy Masters Sniper Skills for ‘Lucky’ Role

Acting careers come with numerous benefits, but one of the most underrated is the variety of specialized skills that performers acquire along the way—abilities most people will never have the opportunity to learn. Anya Taylor-Joy has built an impressive résumé of these unique skills, and her latest project adds another genuinely rare one to her repertoire.

That project is ‘Lucky’, Apple TV’s seven-episode crime thriller based on Marissa Stapley’s novel, which premiered on July 15 and concluded its run on August 19. Taylor-Joy stars as Luciana “Lucky” Armstrong, a lifelong con artist who must go on the run after a multimillion-dollar heist goes awry, pursued by an FBI agent played by Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor and a ruthless crime boss portrayed by Annette Bening.

According to Far Out Magazine, Taylor-Joy has acquired a genuinely rare skill for her roles over the years: the ability to handle a sniper rifle. This training began with her earlier Apple TV+ project ‘The Gorge’, a 2025 sci-fi horror romance where she starred alongside Miles Teller and Sigourney Weaver, playing an elite sniper stationed on one side of a mysterious, monster-filled chasm.

In ‘The Gorge’, Taylor-Joy’s character Drasa and Teller’s Levi are specifically hired for their exceptional sniper skills, tasked with guarding opposite towers of the gorge while being forbidden from making contact with one another, leading to an unexpected long-distance romance. This role required genuine weapons training rather than just faking it on camera, providing Taylor-Joy with hands-on experience in a skill set most audiences would assume is purely a visual effect.

Her commitment to physically demanding and unusual roles has become a hallmark of Taylor-Joy’s filmography. From her breakout horror performances in ‘The Witch’ and ‘Split’ to her Golden Globe-winning portrayal of a chess prodigy in ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, and later as the title character in George Miller’s ‘Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga’, she consistently chooses roles that require more than just emotional depth.

‘Lucky’ continues this trend, focusing less on physical combat skills and more on Lucky’s psychological mastery over every situation she encounters. Critics have praised her performance for channeling the same restless intelligence that Taylor-Joy brought to ‘The Queen’s Gambit’, with reviewers describing her character as one of television’s toughest and smartest fugitives in recent memory.

With the sniper training she acquired for ‘The Gorge’ and the con artist skills she embodies in ‘Lucky’, Taylor-Joy’s recent Apple TV+ projects have allowed her to develop an eclectic set of skills that extend beyond traditional acting. This pattern has become a topic of conversation among fans, eager to see what unconventional expertise she will acquire next.

With ‘Lucky’ now complete and continuing to receive strong reviews, Taylor-Joy’s growing list of specialized skills adds another layer of intrigue to whatever project she takes on next.

Have something to add? Let us know in the comments!