Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga has officially roared into cinemas, and the world seems to be falling in love with George Miller’s mythos all over again. Indeed, the franchise’s blazing-hot identity has hardly subsided here, and it’s sure to please those of you who are partial to the steely, high-octane shootouts that Mad Max has used as a backbone for so long.
But the greatest driving force (no pun intended) of Furiosa are the trio of stars that anchor this dusty odyssey; the effervescently talented Anya Taylor-Joy tops the bill as the titular Imperator, while the MCU’s own Chris Hemsworth stomps about the screen with a darkly mercurial anti-grace as Dementus. With these two sprinkling their specific brands of watchability over this wasteland, it’s hard to complain.
As for who completes this aforementioned trio, that’s a name that we’re very likely going to become a lot more familiar with as the years go on.
Who plays young Furiosa in Furiosa?
For those of you who haven’t yet seen Furiosa, we don’t actually meet Taylor-Joy until we’re a good chunk of the way into the movie. Prior to that, the child version of Furiosa takes center stage, and filling her shoes is none other than Alyla Browne, whose résumé—and the talent to back it up—is magnificently impressive for someone who isn’t yet old enough to drive.
Furiosa isn’t the first instance that Browne has collaborated with Miller; she made her feature debut with the filmmaker in Three Thousand Years of Longing, in which she played a younger version of protagonist Alithea Binnie, whose older version was portrayed by Tilda Swinton.
More recently, she starred as the lead in the 2024 horror film Sting, in which a young girl’s pet spider grows to enormous proportions and begins to lay waste to the neighborhood; a throwaway premise that actually came out the other side as a solid monster movie thanks in part to Browne’s deft performance. She’ll also star as Maria Robotnik in the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
But it’s Furiosa that marks her best work yet, deftly navigating young Furiosa’s crackling capability, steely disposition, and incisive creativity with the exact rugged body language and determination the character needed; to have so sharply set up the proverbial bowling pins for Taylor-Joy to then explosively knock down is something to be greatly admired, and it surely won’t be long until Browne blossoms as an actress in the same manner that Taylor-Joy has over the last several years.
Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is now playing in cinemas.
