Anya Taylor-Joy Tells Seth Meyers: My Dad Was a Champion Powerboat Racer

Anya Taylor-Joy gave Seth Meyers a brief but vivid education in offshore powerboat racing during her appearance on Late Night on March 19, 2026 – and in the process offered a glimpse of the man she calls her favourite person on the planet.

Her father, Dennis Alan Taylor, is a two-time offshore world champion who raced Marlboro-sponsored catamarans across Europe and South America in the 1980s. To most of Meyers’s audience, that was news.

“The First South American Marlboro Man”

Taylor-Joy described the boats with the eye of someone who has watched rather than ridden. “Imagine a giant surfboard with huge motors and you have small walls around it and you’re just flying across the water,” she told Meyers. “Flying seems like an exaggeration, but the boat’s not touching the water.”

When Meyers pointed out that cigarette sponsorship and safety did not obviously belong together, she had a ready answer.

My dad’s actually the first South American Marlboro man. He really went for it.
Anya Taylor-Joy, Late Night with Seth Meyers, March 19, 2026

The description matches the record. Dennis Taylor raced a Marlboro-sponsored wooden catamaran through his 1987 and 1988 world championship campaigns.

She said she had never been on a boat with him. “My dad has six kids. My mother put an end to this at a certain point.” But she has seen the footage. “It looks so cinematic and it looks so cool. But all you can hear is my mother going, oh no, Dennis. Don’t, Dennis.”

Meyers told her she had basically established that her father was the most interesting man in the world. Taylor-Joy did not argue the point.

He’s my favourite person on the planet.
Anya Taylor-Joy

Two World Championships

Dennis Alan Taylor won the 1987 UIM Class 3D World Championship with co-driver Oscar Rodriguez, racing a Marlboro-sponsored wooden catamaran. A year later, in Messina, Italy, he took the UIM 6 Litre World title with Juan Eduardo Ferreyra in a Cougar Marine catamaran built under licence by José Cordó.

The third heat in Messina was not straightforward. The pair hit a large wave; Taylor took bruising to his right eye and Ferreyra lost his helmet in the impact. It took them 25 minutes to retrieve it. They finished the race regardless, adding 127 points to the 800 already secured.

Taylor also won the South American championship in 1982, 1986 and 1988. His brother Juan Taylor won an offshore world championship in 1978.

The former Vice President of Argentina and fellow offshore racer Daniel Scioli described Dennis Taylor as “one of the pioneers of powerboat racing in our country.”

Racing Number Five

In a 2023 interview with W Magazine, Anya Taylor-Joy described a Jaeger-LeCoultre watch she had engraved for her father. She had his personal motto inscribed – “The harder I work, the luckier I get” – and added a circled number five. When he was a powerboat racer, five was his racing number.

Honours

Dennis Alan Taylor received an MBE in the 1982 New Year Honours for services to the British community in Buenos Aires, and an OBE in 1998 for services to British trade with Argentina. He built a career as an investment banker before his racing years, working across Argentina and Britain.

He took his daughter to the 2024 Academy Awards – she had promised him the invitation at the age of 12. Afterwards, she posted on Instagram in Spanish: “At 12 I promised my dad that if I were ever invited to the Oscars I would take him.” On the red carpet, asked whether he was proud of Anya, Dennis Taylor said: “She’s put so much hard work into her career. The talent is there, but the hard work and the perseverance is there. That’s important.”

Anya Taylor-Joy was born in Miami in 1996, the youngest of six children, and grew up between Buenos Aires and London. She is currently one of Hollywood’s most in-demand actresses, with recent credits including Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Dune: Part Two, and voices Princess Peach in The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.