Latest news with #TheMountain
The Irish Sun
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Irish Sun
Nepo-baby with superstar singer mum insists it ‘didn't help her' land movie role – can you guess who she is?
THE daughter of an international superstar insists being a nepo baby "doesn't help" after bagging her first film role. The 22-year-old is studying at Central Saint Martins in London and said that having famous parents is often "disguised as a benefit". Advertisement 6 She is studying at Central Saint Martins and has modelled for MiuMiu Credit: Instagram / @d0lgur 6 Ísadóra Bjarkardóttir Barney is the daughter of a huge pop star Credit: Instagram / @d0lgur Her mum earned 15 Grammy nominations throughout her 40-year career, and forged a path in the art and fashion industries. In the 1980s she shot to fame as the lead singer of The Sugarcubes. A decade later, she'd branched off and quickly established herself as a solo artist with instantly recognisable vocals. Have you guessed who this nepo baby is and who her famous parents are? Advertisement READ MORE ON NEPO BABIES It's Isadora Bjarkardottir Barney - the daughter of Iceland's most eccentric export, Isadora's dad, Matthew Barney, is an American contemporary artist and film director. She was born in London and grew up between New York and Reykjavik after her parents split in 2013. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, she said: "People have preconceived ideas about me, based on what they think they know about my family. Advertisement Most read in Showbiz "I hope I don't sound bitter, because it's such a gift. I just mean that it's a challenge discerning what's what. But you get pretty good at it, eventually." She also said that her parents are the first people she goes to when she has an idea or needs creative advice. "But then there is the other kind of benefit that disguises itself as a benefit but doesn't really serve you, which is nepotism." Isadora admitted that financially, it's helpful to have wealthy parents, but said that in terms of "uncovering how she sees the world or how she relates to it", she said it "doesn't help". Advertisement Bjork has earned a reputation as being an art project in motion - and it seems Isadora is following in her footsteps. The youngster modelled for MiuMiu when she was just 20 years old. She was also on the cover of The Gentlewoman magazine in 2022. Isadora landed the lead role in The Mountain, where she plays Anna, a teenage musician trying to navigate her life after the sudden death of her mother. Advertisement The role came to her by chance after a former crew member she'd worked on a TV series with previously and remembered she'd acted before. In 2022, she played a small role in The Northman, which starred her mum. She played a singing Viking slave alongside Alexander Skarsgard, 6 Bjork and Isadora at the 2005 Venice Film Festival Credit: Getty Advertisement 6 Bjork and Matthew split in 2013 Credit: Getty 6 Bjork has enjoyed a huge career as a singer, performer and fashion icon Credit: Redferns 6 MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – JULY 24: Bjork performing at the Blue Dot Festival in 2022 in Manchester Credit: Getty
Scottish Sun
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Scottish Sun
Nepo-baby with superstar singer mum insists it ‘didn't help her' land movie role – can you guess who she is?
She admitted that the financial backing is a bonus in the family Nepo-baby with superstar singer mum insists it 'didn't help her' land movie role – can you guess who she is? Click to share on X/Twitter (Opens in new window) Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window) THE daughter of an international superstar insists being a nepo baby "doesn't help" after bagging her first film role. The 22-year-old is studying at Central Saint Martins in London and said that having famous parents is often "disguised as a benefit". Sign up for the Entertainment newsletter Sign up 6 She is studying at Central Saint Martins and has modelled for MiuMiu Credit: Instagram / @d0lgur 6 Ísadóra Bjarkardóttir Barney is the daughter of a huge pop star Credit: Instagram / @d0lgur Her mum earned 15 Grammy nominations throughout her 40-year career, and forged a path in the art and fashion industries. In the 1980s she shot to fame as the lead singer of The Sugarcubes. A decade later, she'd branched off and quickly established herself as a solo artist with instantly recognisable vocals. Have you guessed who this nepo baby is and who her famous parents are? It's Isadora Bjarkardottir Barney - the daughter of Iceland's most eccentric export, Bjork, of course! Isadora's dad, Matthew Barney, is an American contemporary artist and film director. She was born in London and grew up between New York and Reykjavik after her parents split in 2013. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, she said: "People have preconceived ideas about me, based on what they think they know about my family. "I hope I don't sound bitter, because it's such a gift. I just mean that it's a challenge discerning what's what. But you get pretty good at it, eventually." She also said that her parents are the first people she goes to when she has an idea or needs creative advice. "But then there is the other kind of benefit that disguises itself as a benefit but doesn't really serve you, which is nepotism." Isadora admitted that financially, it's helpful to have wealthy parents, but said that in terms of "uncovering how she sees the world or how she relates to it", she said it "doesn't help". Bjork has earned a reputation as being an art project in motion - and it seems Isadora is following in her footsteps. The youngster modelled for MiuMiu when she was just 20 years old. She was also on the cover of The Gentlewoman magazine in 2022. Isadora landed the lead role in The Mountain, where she plays Anna, a teenage musician trying to navigate her life after the sudden death of her mother. The role came to her by chance after a former crew member she'd worked on a TV series with previously and remembered she'd acted before. In 2022, she played a small role in The Northman, which starred her mum. She played a singing Viking slave alongside Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, and Anya Taylor-Joy. 6 Bjork and Isadora at the 2005 Venice Film Festival Credit: Getty 6 Bjork and Matthew split in 2013 Credit: Getty 6 Bjork has enjoyed a huge career as a singer, performer and fashion icon Credit: Redferns
Sydney Morning Herald
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Sydney Morning Herald
Nepo curse or gift? The pros and cons of being Bjork's daughter
Isadora Bjarkardottir Barney knew she wanted to act by the time she was 10, when she started taking extra classes in theatre at her private school in New York. 'And from there it just flew.' In her last year at school, she jumped at the opportunity to work with Robert Eggers, determined to somehow combine filming with her final exams. At 22, she has just played her first lead role in Asthildur Kjartansdottir's The Mountain, a delicate story of family grief in which she plays a teenage girl trying to manage her father's disintegration. She also sings, her voice alternately sawing and soaring in songs she devised with her fellow cast members. None of this is too surprising, given that Isadora – or Doa, as she is generally known – is the only daughter of Icelandic singer, sometime actor and all-round adventurer Bjork and Matthew Barney, doyen of New York's avant-garde. After their acrimonious split back in 2013, she spent half of each year studying in New York and half in Reykjavik, where she still swaps between jobs as they come up: working in a cool record shop, on film crews or in music production. That's the Icelandic way. I'm only surprised she hasn't squeezed in a season in the fish factories. When we speak, she says she has just wrapped a local festival, producing grassroots Icelandic artists. 'Young people who don't have the funds to do it the right way – so we have to do it the fun way.' She chuckles and snuffles: the Icelandic farmers are all cutting this year's hay crop. She tells me this in a slow American drawl; it is only when she uses an Icelandic name that her voice is suddenly crisp. She feels herself shift between cultures, she says, when she speaks. 'My Icelandic side is different from my American one; like anyone who is bicultural,' she says. 'There is a reason why certain languages develop in certain places. It's like it's cold, so whatever you're feeling, just spit it out because it's too cold to stand out here and chew the fat! I'm maybe also more direct in Icelandic, more to the point. This interview would be a lot shorter if I were speaking Icelandic!' In a crisis of sudden bereavement, however, the family in The Mountain find it difficult to say anything at all. Barney plays Anna, a young musician whose band is starting to get the gigs and online plays that suggest success is around the corner. Her father Atli (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson), an electrician, was part of a seminal punk band before she was born; her mother Maria (Solveig Gudmundsdottir) is a science teacher and passionate astronomer who believes she has just made a discovery: a comet over Iceland. To Maria's disappointment, neither Atli nor Anna can muster any interest in her comet. When she goes to the family's mountain cabin to observe it, they find reasons to stay at home. So she goes alone, walks on the lava fields at night, falls, dies. Atli blames himself. Anna is torn between grief and getting on with a life in which there are both too many burdens and too many choices. Crucially, she realises she is pregnant. Loading What drew her to the story, says Barney, was the way the character was pulled in so many directions. 'I think Anna's teetering carefully on multiple precipices,' she says. 'There is that sense of helplessness in her situation, which is something we all sometimes want to succumb to; she's stepping in and out of that, embarking on journeys of grief, of adulthood, of both motherhood and losing a mother, of being a daughter in this new way, of being an artist. It's a lot of big firsts that are being opened up to her.' As someone who has also negotiated numerous possible life routes already, she surely identified. 'It's a relatable thing, I think, to anyone,' she counters. 'Although it did definitely come at a time when I was unsure about a lot of things and saying yes, just going for it, was the only thing I could hold on to. There isn't a career path that's pre-written if you're committed to a life in the arts so yes, maybe it was relatable. It's never completely clear if she's making the right decision. And that's comforting, because even if you are making the right decision, it doesn't always feel that way.' The role seems to fit Barney so well that it comes as a surprise to learn she was cast as a last-minute replacement. In Eggers' extraordinary drama The Northman, a muddy, bloody medieval saga starring Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard, she played a slave called Melkorka who also sang, Viking style. Eggers wrote the script with Icelandic poet Sjon. Bjork, friend of both, had introduced them; after agreeing to play a cameo as a witch, she then asked if her daughter could audition as Melkorka. Eggers was adamant she was the best person for the role, but she wasn't there by chance. The part of Anna, however, came through the back door. Barney had worked in production on a television series with the first assistant director on The Mountain, who vaguely recalled that this young casting director had done a bit of acting. 'I went over for coffee and we did some scenes and I brought some demos for music and we just flew from there. It felt like a dream, really. I was given a lot of room to play once we got started, but it kind of came out of nowhere: it was wild.' Barney is now studying performance at Central Saint Martins in London. She finished the film before starting the course, but feels it was also an education. 'I definitely felt on set that 'wow, this is really forming me as a collaborator'. The first few weeks I was maybe a little shy, kind of nodding my head and saying 'sure, I'll stand here and say that'.' Haraldsson encouraged her to take the character into her own hands. 'Eventually, I started to take up more space.' There is no doubt that being the child of Bjork and Barney is quite a launching pad for a young artist – and not only because she has been surrounded by creative thinkers all her life. She also has two top-calibre professional advisers. 'I have the benefit of their direct support as experienced veterans in their fields, which I am so, so lucky to have,' she says. 'They're the first people I come to, if I have an idea for a script or a project. They have so much guidance to offer. 'But then there is the other kind of benefit, that disguises itself as a benefit but doesn't really serve you, which is nepotism. Financially, sure, it can get you super far, but in terms of one's own personal journey – uncovering how I see the world, how I relate to it and how I'd like to share that with people as an artist – it doesn't help you very much.' People have pre-conceived ideas about her, based on what they think they know about her family. 'I hope I don't sound bitter,' she adds hastily. 'Because it's such a gift. I just mean that it's a challenge discerning what's what.' She snuffles and laughs again. 'But you get pretty good at it, eventually.'
The Age
18-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Age
Nepo curse or gift? The pros and cons of being Bjork's daughter
Isadora Bjarkardottir Barney knew she wanted to act by the time she was 10, when she started taking extra classes in theatre at her private school in New York. 'And from there it just flew.' In her last year at school, she jumped at the opportunity to work with Robert Eggers, determined to somehow combine filming with her final exams. At 22, she has just played her first lead role in Asthildur Kjartansdottir's The Mountain, a delicate story of family grief in which she plays a teenage girl trying to manage her father's disintegration. She also sings, her voice alternately sawing and soaring in songs she devised with her fellow cast members. None of this is too surprising, given that Isadora – or Doa, as she is generally known – is the only daughter of Icelandic singer, sometime actor and all-round adventurer Bjork and Matthew Barney, doyen of New York's avant-garde. After their acrimonious split back in 2013, she spent half of each year studying in New York and half in Reykjavik, where she still swaps between jobs as they come up: working in a cool record shop, on film crews or in music production. That's the Icelandic way. I'm only surprised she hasn't squeezed in a season in the fish factories. When we speak, she says she has just wrapped a local festival, producing grassroots Icelandic artists. 'Young people who don't have the funds to do it the right way – so we have to do it the fun way.' She chuckles and snuffles: the Icelandic farmers are all cutting this year's hay crop. She tells me this in a slow American drawl; it is only when she uses an Icelandic name that her voice is suddenly crisp. She feels herself shift between cultures, she says, when she speaks. 'My Icelandic side is different from my American one; like anyone who is bicultural,' she says. 'There is a reason why certain languages develop in certain places. It's like it's cold, so whatever you're feeling, just spit it out because it's too cold to stand out here and chew the fat! I'm maybe also more direct in Icelandic, more to the point. This interview would be a lot shorter if I were speaking Icelandic!' In a crisis of sudden bereavement, however, the family in The Mountain find it difficult to say anything at all. Barney plays Anna, a young musician whose band is starting to get the gigs and online plays that suggest success is around the corner. Her father Atli (Bjorn Hlynur Haraldsson), an electrician, was part of a seminal punk band before she was born; her mother Maria (Solveig Gudmundsdottir) is a science teacher and passionate astronomer who believes she has just made a discovery: a comet over Iceland. To Maria's disappointment, neither Atli nor Anna can muster any interest in her comet. When she goes to the family's mountain cabin to observe it, they find reasons to stay at home. So she goes alone, walks on the lava fields at night, falls, dies. Atli blames himself. Anna is torn between grief and getting on with a life in which there are both too many burdens and too many choices. Crucially, she realises she is pregnant. Loading What drew her to the story, says Barney, was the way the character was pulled in so many directions. 'I think Anna's teetering carefully on multiple precipices,' she says. 'There is that sense of helplessness in her situation, which is something we all sometimes want to succumb to; she's stepping in and out of that, embarking on journeys of grief, of adulthood, of both motherhood and losing a mother, of being a daughter in this new way, of being an artist. It's a lot of big firsts that are being opened up to her.' As someone who has also negotiated numerous possible life routes already, she surely identified. 'It's a relatable thing, I think, to anyone,' she counters. 'Although it did definitely come at a time when I was unsure about a lot of things and saying yes, just going for it, was the only thing I could hold on to. There isn't a career path that's pre-written if you're committed to a life in the arts so yes, maybe it was relatable. It's never completely clear if she's making the right decision. And that's comforting, because even if you are making the right decision, it doesn't always feel that way.' The role seems to fit Barney so well that it comes as a surprise to learn she was cast as a last-minute replacement. In Eggers' extraordinary drama The Northman, a muddy, bloody medieval saga starring Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard, she played a slave called Melkorka who also sang, Viking style. Eggers wrote the script with Icelandic poet Sjon. Bjork, friend of both, had introduced them; after agreeing to play a cameo as a witch, she then asked if her daughter could audition as Melkorka. Eggers was adamant she was the best person for the role, but she wasn't there by chance. The part of Anna, however, came through the back door. Barney had worked in production on a television series with the first assistant director on The Mountain, who vaguely recalled that this young casting director had done a bit of acting. 'I went over for coffee and we did some scenes and I brought some demos for music and we just flew from there. It felt like a dream, really. I was given a lot of room to play once we got started, but it kind of came out of nowhere: it was wild.' Barney is now studying performance at Central Saint Martins in London. She finished the film before starting the course, but feels it was also an education. 'I definitely felt on set that 'wow, this is really forming me as a collaborator'. The first few weeks I was maybe a little shy, kind of nodding my head and saying 'sure, I'll stand here and say that'.' Haraldsson encouraged her to take the character into her own hands. 'Eventually, I started to take up more space.' There is no doubt that being the child of Bjork and Barney is quite a launching pad for a young artist – and not only because she has been surrounded by creative thinkers all her life. She also has two top-calibre professional advisers. 'I have the benefit of their direct support as experienced veterans in their fields, which I am so, so lucky to have,' she says. 'They're the first people I come to, if I have an idea for a script or a project. They have so much guidance to offer. 'But then there is the other kind of benefit, that disguises itself as a benefit but doesn't really serve you, which is nepotism. Financially, sure, it can get you super far, but in terms of one's own personal journey – uncovering how I see the world, how I relate to it and how I'd like to share that with people as an artist – it doesn't help you very much.' People have pre-conceived ideas about her, based on what they think they know about her family. 'I hope I don't sound bitter,' she adds hastily. 'Because it's such a gift. I just mean that it's a challenge discerning what's what.' She snuffles and laughs again. 'But you get pretty good at it, eventually.'
Scotsman
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Scotsman
Floki's Valhalla launches on mainnet
FLOKI launched Valhalla on mainnet today (30) | Valhalla, the highly anticipated metaverse game by Floki, has officially launched its mainnet today (30) - and players can earn MILLIONS. Sign up to our daily newsletter Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to Edinburgh News, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... The game, which has been in development for over three years, marks a major shift for the company from its origins as a meme token to a blockchain-based massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG). Inspired by norse mythology, Valhalla offers players a unique experience. With elements such as character progression, combat, resource management, and guild cooperation, the game has attracted the attention of millions. One in particular includes Hafthor Bjornsson, best known for his role as The Mountain in Game of Thrones who streamed the MMORPG on his twitch: . The game features turn-based tactical combat in hexagonal battle arenas, NFT creatures called Veras, and an expansive open world that players can explore and conquer together. It also offers real ownership of in-game assets, giving players multiple ways to earn for their time and skill through its play-to-earn structure. This sees FLOKI tokens earned through battles, quests, and trading - unlike most traditional games - and are a meme-inspired crypto token with real value. "This is not just about putting a game on-chain - it's about making blockchain gaming better and delivering on the promise made to our community that we will fix many of the problems found within the blockchain P2E gaming space," said Pedro Vidal, Community Relations Officer at FLOKI. "We're not building for hype. 'We're building something gamers actually want to play - and pushing the boundaries of what can be accomplished in the play-to-earn and blockchain gaming world. 'This is only the beginning." Alongside the launch, millions from the treasury will fund In Game Rewards and also further game development, marketing, and the formation of industry partnerships aimed at expanding user reach and engagement. Which comes at a good time following FLOKI's new partnership with Method, an esports organisation , and with the forecasted growth of the blockchain gaming industry to exceed $25 billion by 2030. Method, who has deep ties to the World of Warcraft community, will support Valhalla through dedicated content - including guides, tips, and updates across its platforms. The collaboration aims to introduce Valhalla to Method's large MMO-focused audience ahead of the game's mainnet launch on June 30, marking a significant step for Floki's efforts to expand Web3 gaming into the mainstream. Valhalla is a blockchain-based MMORPG inspired by Norse mythology, offering players the chance to discover, tame, and battle with creatures called Veras. The game features a player-driven economy and a hexagonal battlefield designed for dynamic combat. You can play the game now and it will be officially launched on Mainnet on June 30, 2025. Valhalla was developed by FLOKI. Learn more at
