SafeX Pro Exchange|Mikey Madison wanted to do sex work 'justice' in 'Anora.' An Oscar could be next.

NEW YORK – Mikey Madison is SafeX Pro Exchangein the midst of the biggest year of her life.

But sitting in a Midtown office, all she can think about is her dog. The “Anora” star recently adopted a rescue Chihuahua named Jam. He just got neutered and is now resting at home in Los Angeles with her mom.

“I miss my puppy, but apart from that, I’m good,” Madison says with a grin. “Hopefully he’ll be trained soon so I can bring him places. It’d be nice to have a little buddy with me.”

The actress has been on a months-long world tour promoting “Anora” (in theaters nationwide Friday), a madcap modern fairy tale that follows a headstrong Brooklyn stripper named Ani (Madison), who's swept off her feet by Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn), a rowdy big spender and spoiled young son of a Russian oligarch. But Ani’s coach soon becomes a pumpkin after the couple ties the knot in Las Vegas and Ivan’s scornful parents try to annul the marriage.

The character was written specifically for Madison by filmmaker Sean Baker (“The Florida Project”), who knew she could capture the intensity and naivete that Ani required.

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

“She has very unique eyes, and I knew we'd be getting a lot of closeups,” Baker says. “I love her subtlety, especially with Ivan. She really rides that fine line: You don’t know whether it’s Ani performing or falling for him a bit. She allows the audience to understand that gray area with a sex worker and her client, in which she’s finding some sort of attraction, too.”

Madison, 25, dove headfirst into research for the movie, which is widely considered an Oscar front-runner in several categories, including best picture and best actress. Before shooting, she sat at her laptop and wrote down roughly 200 questions about the character, creating her own backstory that included everything from the kinds of cigarettes Ani smoked to her favorite classes in school.

“Ani felt like such a departure from anything I’ve ever done, and I needed to specify everything about her,” Madison says. The actress also moved to Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood months ahead of production, where she studied Russian, learned pole dancing and shadowed dancers at clubs.

“I really wanted to do these women justice; I didn’t want to let them down,” Madison says. “It’s one of the only jobs I can think of that is both physically and mentally demanding. You’re dancing all night, up on your feet, essentially doing acrobatics, and then you’re also involved in these deep, intimate conversations and getting close to people very quickly. It’s a lot to take on.”

Join our Watch Party! Sign up to receive USA TODAY's movie and TV recommendations right in your inbox.

Mikey Madison is a force in 'Anora,' but she doesn't 'have a wild side'

As a young kid in Los Angeles, Madison had no acting ambitions. Horseback riding was “the biggest love of my life,” she says, and her dream job was a riding instructor. Growing up with four siblings, she was never the kind of girl to put on shows in her living room.

“Absolutely not,” Madison says, blushing. “I was always very reserved. It’s hard to imagine someone born shy, but my parents say even as a baby I was a bit of a lone wolf.”

Her parents are psychologists, so they’re “very inquisitive about life and in touch with their emotions,” she says. Those qualities rubbed off on Madison, who loved movies like “Pretty in Pink” and “The Hunger Games” and pictured herself playing the lead characters. Gradually, “something inside of me was like, ‘You should try this. It’s right for you.’”

She started acting at 14 in low-budget short films before landing her breakthrough role two years later in FX comedy “Better Things,” which aired for five seasons. The series taught her the importance of a strong work ethic and helped her land bigger projects.

In 2019, she portrayed a maniacal Manson girl in Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” alongside fellow rising stars Margaret Qualley, Sydney Sweeney and Maya Hawke. (“I’ve been really happy to watch everyone’s careers flourish,” she says. “I’m cheering them on.”) And in 2022, she donned the iconic Ghostface mask for “Scream,” playing a comically unhinged film buff in the meta-slasher franchise. After watching those two performances, Baker was surprised to find how soft-spoken Madison is in real life.

"I thought she might have a wild side to her, but she doesn't," Baker says. "It was nice to see she definitely wasn't typecast for those roles. That gave me confidence of like, 'Oh, wow, she's an actor.'"

The Oscar-tipped actress is 'thoughtful' about what she does next

In the last few years, Madison says she’s learned to enjoy “a slower way of living.” In her downtime, she likes writing poetry (“It’s therapeutic for me, but to release any of that would be way too vulnerable”). Her favorite recent movies were “The Substance” and “Blink Twice,” and she loves reality TV. “I feel like it’s good for my acting,” she says. “Or at least that’s what I’ve been telling myself.”

“Anora” sets a high bar for future projects, in the sense that Baker “amplified my voice and ideas, and wanted me to be such a big part of every aspect of making the film,” Madison says. “I’ve never been asked to participate in that way before.” Going forward, “it’s not so much about the quantity of work I do. I’m grateful I have the opportunity to be very thoughtful about what I choose next.”

She finds the Oscar buzz “very flattering,” but the reactions that mean the most have come from sex workers, and her twin brother, Miles.

“I was nervous about my family seeing it because you want them to like your work,” Madison says. “My twin is my closest friend, so I was able to ask him, ‘Did you like it? Do you think I’m a good actor?’ It’s embarrassing to even admit that, but he was speechless when he saw it for the first time. He was like, ‘Mikey, I didn’t see you at all; I just saw the character.’ Coming from him, that was really special to hear.”