Anya Taylor-Joy credits Super Mario Bros Movie co-star Jack Black with helping her learn English

Anya Taylor-Joy has credited her Super Mario Bros Movie co-star Jack Black with her bilingual abilities.

The actor was born in Florida while her parents were on holiday, but was raised in Argentina until the age of six when her family relocated to London.

Taylor-Joy went viral this week after conducting an interview in fluent Spanish; many of her fans assumed the actor was English.

While discussing her role as Princess Peach in the newly released Super Mario Bros Movie with Buzzfeed, the 26-year-old said she was “super starstruck” meeting Black (who plays Bowser in the film) due to her love of School of Rock.

“At the school I went to, when I first moved to London, they would play School of Rock every Friday,” she told the outlet.

“At that time, I didn’t really speak much English, if any, so that and Harry Potter and Jumanji are like how I learned English.”

Describing meeting Black for the first time on the press tour for the new video game adaptation, Taylor-Joy said: “The sound that came out of me was just this high pitch shriek that I was not expecting.

“We haven’t met each other because we all recorded our parts individually, so I was super starstruck when I saw the schedule for today.”

She added: “I very seldom get like that, but I was just running around earlier like, ‘Oh my God, Tenacious D, this is amazing.’”

Chris Pratt stars as the titular Italian plumber in the movie, which came out on 7 April, while Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia) voices Luigi and Seth Rogen lends his voice to Donkey Kong.

In another recent interview, Taylor-Joy said the research for her role as Princess Peach had turned her into a video game enthusiast.

“So now I am a gamer, and it’s really fun,” she said. “Ideally, I like playing at arcades, because, again, it’s like cinema; I love the ceremony. I’ll go with a whole bunch of friends. And we’ll just spend hours at the arcade.”

The film is directed by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic from a script by Matthew Fogel.

Pratt’s casting as the famous Italian plumber has attracted criticism, including from John Leguizamo – who played Luigi in the 1993 live-action film Super Mario Bros. The Latin actor called the casting “backwards”.

The Super Mario Bros Movie is in cinemas now.