Anya Taylor-Joy hid behind mattress from masked raiders wielding crowbar

Rock star Malcolm McRae told actress wife to hide as villains tried to crowbar their way into their bedroom in 1am London mansion raid

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Anya Taylor-Joy’s rock star husband sent two masked raiders packing armed with a table lamp as they tried to crowbar their way into the couple’s bedroom.

Malcolm McRae told his traumatised Hollywood actress wife to hide behind their bed after the pair smashed a window in a side door to break into the London mansion where the couple were staying at 1am.

McRae, 31, locked the door and grabbed the lamp as the burglars – determined to target his famous wife – tried to wrench their way into the room.

The guitarist, pianist and singer with two-piece band more*, shouted: “I have a gun. I have a gun.”

The frightened couple could hear the raiders discussing the chances they could be confronted with a weapon on the other side of the door before fleeing.

Police arrived to find Anya and her husband of four years still barricaded inside the bedroom with damage done to the door frame. The couple told officers they had been traumatised by the ordeal and feared being targeted again in the future.

Golden Globe-winning Anya, 29, who starred in hit Netflix chess drama The Queen’s Gambit, the Dune movies and Peaky Blinders, appeared on the BAFTAs red carpet a week after her ordeal.

Nine days after the raid, one of the burglars – Kirk Holdrick – struck again, dressing as a cop to break into a house in Sandbanks, near Poole, Dorset, where a mum and daughter were held at gunpoint.

He and an accomplice threatened to burn the daughter with an iron and shoot her dead in front of her mother – who was bound up with cable ties – if she did not open the family safe.

They fled with £200,000 of luxury watches, designer handbags, jewellery and cash.

Holdrick, 43, who previously dated one of the cast members of reality TV show The Only Way Is Essex, is a career criminal who was jailed for life in 2005 for armed robberies on a security van transporting cash and jewellery.

He was recalled to prison to continue serving his life sentence after his latest crimes, and in November was jailed for 12 years for the Sandbanks robbery.

Holdrick was jailed for an extra three years for the raid on Taylor-Joy and her husband.

Wood Green Crown Court heard the US-born actress, who grew up in London, was staying at the property on February 12 2023, with her American husband and his musical partner Kane Ritchotte, the former drummer of Alaskan rock band Portugal. The Man.

McRae heard the sound of glass smashing, went to investigate and saw Holdrick and his accomplice – wearing balaclavas and gloves – forcing their way into the property.

The musician shouted ‘hey, stop’ before running back to his wife in the bedroom. Police later found CCTV footage showing Holdrick and his accomplice scaling a wall to the house, triggering an external security light and becoming ‘startled’ as they tried to break in.

Holdrick – who also went by the alias of Aaron Evans – left his DNA behind on the back door. Shoe prints from his trainers were found outside the bedroom door.

He was arrested two months later after stepping off a ferry from Belfast to Liverpool and denied being responsible for the raid. Holdrick claimed he had been to a party at the mansion previously and suggested that was how his DNA must have been found there.

He later abandoned his defence and admitted burglary.

Prosecutors highlighted Taylor-Joy and her husband’s fame and suggested the raid may have been ‘targeted’ as Holdrick headed to the bedroom rather than stealing expensive items from the rest of the property.

Holdrick’s lawyers tried to convince the Crown Prosecution Service to drop the burglary charge as he was already serving a life sentence and had admitted two counts of robbery, possessing of an imitation firearm and fraud following the Sandbanks raid.

But prosecutors insisted on continuing the case, arguing the London burglary was part of an escalating pattern.

Holdrick, from Borehamwood, Herts, has convictions dating back to when he was a teenager including burglaries.

Anya and her husband originally married in secret in New Orleans, US, in 2022 before repledging their love a year later at a lavish ceremony in Venice, Italy, in front of 150 guests.

Anya said at the time her dress was embroidered with a ‘little speedboat’ because her dad Dennis was a former ‘world powerboat champion’.

She and Malcolm live in Los Angeles but the actress has said previously: “I’ve owned my house for two or three years and I still haven’t fully unpacked. Everything is just basically liveable.

“My work life moves so fast that my private life tends to not necessarily catch up.”