Mikey Madison, the shy horse rider who won an Oscar and is back in a big way

Mikey Madison burst onto the scene, won an Oscar and disappeared. Just a couple of seasons ago, the 27-year-old Los Angeles actress was everywhere in Hollywood. After a long awards campaign in which Demi Moore seemed poised to triumph at every ceremony, the Oscars delivered a surprise. Madison, still virtually unknown to the wider public, took home the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Anora, in which she played a sex worker in a gritty portrayal far removed from Pretty Woman and other fairy tales.

But after months of near-constant exposure during awards season, Madison retreated from the spotlight. True to her reserved nature, she largely disappeared from public view after her Oscar win. Now, the time has come for her return.

Madison is back on screens, magazine covers and billboards after an 18-month hiatus. She was in no rush. As Hollywood’s newest star, offers presumably came flooding in, but she chose to take her time and be selective about her next project. She has not appeared in anything since Anora until the kind of opportunity an Oscar can bring came knocking: a story about social media, for an actress who has stayed off it for years, and one created by Aaron Sorkin. The creator of acclaimed political dramas such as The West Wing, The Newsroom and the classic A Few Good Men returns to cinemas with The Social Reckoning, which he wrote, produced and directed.

More than 15 years ago, Sorkin wrote the screenplay for The Social Network, the film that chronicled the murky origins of Facebook, then the internet’s hottest social platform and one that would forever reshape how the world interacts online.

Today, with Facebook having lost millions of users and facing lawsuits over its manipulative and addictive features, Sorkin returns to the story from a different angle: how Wall Street Journal reporter Jeff Horwitz (played by Jeremy Allen White) exposed the platform’s and Mark Zuckerberg’s (portrayed by Jeremy Strong) dirty laundry, with the help of former Facebook engineer Frances Haugen. And Haugen is played by none other than Madison.

It is a demanding, mature lead role, written by one of the most celebrated screenwriters of his generation. If it shares anything with Ani, her character in Anora, it is that both are based on real women. But unlike the film that earned Madison her breakthrough in Hollywood, for which she met with numerous sex workers to help shape the character, she never met the real Haugen while preparing for the role.

Madison has said in interviews that she wanted to be part of the project from the moment she read Sorkin’s script, and that shortly afterward he offered to introduce her to Haugen. But she chose not to take the easy route, preferring instead to make the role her own.

“I’m playing a character based off of a real person, and we’re following her story and the facts of what happened very closely and specifically and honestly,” she said last week in an interview with Variety. “But in terms of building a character, it was one that I built purely from the ground up. Of course I wanted to meet her — I found her to be amazing. But I was also concerned that it would interfere with Aaron’s and my vision, and I didn’t want it to alter the character that I had created. And so I decided to just hold off a little bit until I reached out to her.”

Sorkin eventually introduced the two by email, and they exchanged messages. They did not meet in person until the project was complete. Their first encounter came at the film’s premiere in New York earlier this month.

It is another example of the way Madison goes about things on her own terms in Hollywood. Perhaps it is because of her youth — she was the first member of Generation Z to win an Oscar in any acting category — or perhaps it is because she has spent her entire life on the fringes of Hollywood without ever being dazzled by it. She is one of the few actresses born and raised in Los Angeles.

Mikaela, her real name, grew up in Santa Clarita, in the hot San Fernando Valley, just a few miles from where her career would later take off, alongside her parents, her red-haired twin brother and her three other siblings, to whom she is still very close.

Both of her parents are psychologists, and the family has always been far removed from Hollywood glamour. They are close-knit, but as a child Madison felt so different from the rest of them, especially physically, that she grew up thinking she had been adopted. It became something of a family joke, one her siblings delighted in, she recently told Vogue. The idea stuck with her to the point that she eventually took a DNA test.

She seemed far more likely to win an Olympic medal than an Oscar. As a child, inspired by a cousin on her mother’s side who was a horse rider in Texas, as well as by her grandmother and mother, both horsewomen themselves, Madison dreamed of becoming an equestrian and had her own ponies on the family farm.

She went on to compete at a national level in the United States and, as she recalled during a Saturday Night Live appearance shortly after winning the Oscar, she “never” planned on becoming an actress. Instead, she was a proud rider and even switched to homeschooling so she could spend more time with her horses.

Growing up in an environment that valued a nontraditional education and where classic films were a regular presence gradually sparked her interest in acting. It also became a way of overcoming her intense shyness and, as she has said, of understanding and managing her emotions.

But passion was one thing; knowing how the industry worked was another. In a 2024 interview with EL PAÍS, she said she “knew no one in the industry, nor in any artistic circles”: “I only had my mother, willing to take me to auditions; I knew nothing about film or acting… it took me a long time to get an opportunity, many rejections, stretches without work.”

But when her breakthrough finally came, luck was on her side. It led her to make her film debut with none other than Quentin Tarantino in Once Upon a Time... in Hollywood (2019). It was a small role, but one that caught the eye of the man who would become her greatest champion, writer-director Sean Baker.

He crossed paths with her again three years later in Scream (2022). “We knew it was her: she had range, she could be funny, she had attitude, she was sexy, intense and she could scream...,” Baker told EL PAÍS a couple of years ago. “And if there was one thing we knew about our Anora then, it was that she was going to have to scream a lot. Also, she has a very unique look we could photograph in an interesting way.”

A year later, after training in everything from Russian to pole dancing, she became Ani. Another year after that, she had an Oscar in her hand.

That award, which sits alongside her collection of record players and vintage vinyl, has brought both opportunities and breathing room. She has become the face of luxury brands, but has managed to keep a relatively low profile, enough to avoid overexposure while leaving audiences wanting more. Madison says many things have changed, but that she feels much the same, only now with the luxury of being able to slow down and choose.

“I’ve been really lucky that I’ve been able to, since Anora, be a part of exploring really interesting characters and working with filmmakers that I’ve dreamed of,” she told People.

The Sorkin film is only the beginning. Madison is already shooting the ensemble drama My Darling California alongside Jessica Chastain and preparing an Edgar Allan Poe adaptation with Léa Seydoux.

Madison is taking things slowly. Far from the rush that often surrounds Hollywood’s latest discoveries, she remains rooted in her home life: her parents, her horses, her two donkeys, which she trains, her three chihuahuas and her cat. In a recent interview with People, she described herself as “a homebody.” “I like being with my animals, I like cooking. People always ask what my hobbies are, and I’m like, ‘My hobbies are watching movies and hanging out with my pets and friends,’” she said.

Far from social media, close to her horses. Far from Hollywood, yet close to Hollywood. And firmly on the path of the career she wants to build.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition