Man sentenced for trying to break into bedroom of Queen's Gambit and Peaky Blinders star

A man has been sentenced for breaking into a house where actor Anya Taylor-Joy was staying and using a crowbar to try to get into her bedroom.

Kirk Holdrick, 43, and another man smashed their way into the London mansion in balaclavas in the early hours of 12 February 2023. They were confronted by Taylor-Joy's husband, Malcolm MacRae, who had gone to investigate the sound of breaking glass.

He ran back to the bedroom and barricaded himself and his wife in - armed only with a lamp - as the raiders tried to prise open the door. CCTV captured Holdrick and his accomplice climbing a wall to the home and becoming "startled" as they triggered a security light.

Wood Green Crown Court heard they fled after MacRae claimed to have a gun. Prosecutors believe they may have been specifically targeting the Hollywood star.

Taylor-Joy - known for productions such as The Queen's Gambit, Peaky Blinders and the Dune films - was still barricaded inside with her husband when police arrived. Nine days later, Holdrick broke into another house in the famous millionaires' enclave of Sandbanks and tied up a woman and her daughter at gunpoint.

Holdrick and accomplice Ashley Fulton dressed as police to gain entry. They dragged the daughter by her hair and threatened to burn her with an iron and shoot her dead if they weren't given the code to the safe.

They failed but made off with about £200,000 worth of watches, jewellery and cash. In November, Holdrick was jailed for 12 years after admitting the Sandbanks raid and received a further three-year term this week for the burglary involving Taylor-Joy and her husband.

He initially denied the London burglary and claimed DNA found at the scene was there because he had been to a party at the property. However, he pleaded guilty in December last year.

Holdrick, who once dated a cast member from The Only Way Is Essex, was also jailed for life in 2005 for an armed robbery on a security van and has convictions dating back to his teens..