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1Fix the driver behind crashes, sound loss and screen glitches2Clear out junk files and repair common Windows errors3Scan for outdated or missing drivers - takes under a minuteAnya Taylor-Joy’s face did not become a public controversy. The story traces to a 2016 W Magazine profile, published when she was 20, in which she recalled that someone tagged her in a Facebook picture of a fish and compared its eye placement to hers. She said she was really upset by it and stopped looking in mirrors for a very long time. The “controversy” is best understood as appearance-based online mockery and the renewed attention to her account of its effect, not a feud or a dispute she started.
What Taylor-Joy actually said
The primary source is her interview with W Magazine, published in October 2016 under the headline “Anya Taylor-Joy, the New Indie Queen.” The profile was tied to her early film career and to The Witch. When asked about her widely spaced eyes, she described the comparison this way:
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“I can definitely remember when Facebook was a thing and I was never aware that my eyes were far apart and then someone tagged me in a picture with a fish and they were like, ‘This is you ’cause your eyes are like here.'”
She then described the effect: “I was really upset about it and I didn’t enjoy it and I kind of stopped looking in mirrors for a very long time.”
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Two things in these words matter for an accurate reading. First, the comparison came from another person, not from a critic or a headline. Second, what the reader has is Taylor-Joy’s own report of how the remark felt to her. It is not an objective assessment of her appearance, and it should not be read as one.
Timeline of the account and its coverage
- October 2016: The W Magazine profile is published. It identifies her as 20 and contains the question about the comments and her answer.
- January 19, 2017: The Standard’s profile of her also discusses school bullying and classmates tagging her in a fish picture. That article is a journalist’s summary of the topic. The first-person account of the incident comes from the 2016 interview.
- 2023: The Independent reported on the 2016 interview after it resurfaced online and described renewed sympathy from fans. That reaction came years after the original interview and is separate from the Facebook incident itself.
Reading the dates in order makes the story clearer. The remark and her reaction were described in 2016. Later coverage revisited them. Nothing in that sequence shows a new event in 2026.
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Why the “controversy” label is misleading
The word “controversy” suggests a public dispute with two sides. What the sources document is different: an unkind comment made about her looks, which she later described publicly as painful, and a later wave of sympathetic attention when the interview was shared again. Taylor-Joy was not in a public argument with the person who tagged her, and the sources do not say who that person was, how many people saw the post, or how far it spread.
The headline framing also places the focus on her face as the problem. The reporting points in the other direction. The thing under scrutiny is the mockery itself and its impact on how she related to her own reflection.
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What the sources do and do not establish
- Established: She described a Facebook comparison to a fish as hurtful, and she said it made her stop looking in mirrors for a long time. This is her account, given in the October 2016 W Magazine interview.
- Established: The incident was reported as part of her school-age experience of bullying in the January 2017 Standard profile, and the same account was revived in 2023 coverage.
- Not established: The identity of the person who posted the tag, the audience or reach of the post, and any clinical diagnosis of how the experience affected her. The sources do not discuss cosmetic procedures, and nothing in them supports speculation about one.
How to read the story responsibly
If you are writing about this or sharing it, keep three things separate: the comment, which came from someone else; her description of its effect, which is her own; and the later coverage, which is a different event. Quoting her directly and naming the 2016 interview as the source keeps all three in place. Treating the story as a feud, or as a verdict on how she looks, goes beyond what the reporting says.
For readers interested in how public figures talk about online harassment and body image, her account is useful precisely because it is specific. It describes a single remark, a clear effect on her daily habits, and a timeline that can be checked against the original publication.
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