Miyako
Miyako is an actor, born 2007.
Miyako, credited as Miya Cech across most of the work listed here, is an American actress born in 2007 who has spent her career so far inside genre film and television aimed at people her own age. Her film debut was The Darkest Minds in 2018, as Suzume, one of a group of runaway children with abilities the state would rather contain.
What followed was a fast and unusually varied run for a young performer: ZhenZhen in Rim of the World, a Netflix adventure that strands four summer campers in an alien invasion; Akiko Yamato in the second revival of Are You Afraid of the Dark?; the young Sasha in Always Be My Maybe; Kym Chang Cohen in You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah. She also led Marvelous and the Black Hole and appeared in The Astronauts, neither of which is among the credits listed here.
The largest part so far is Toph Beifong in Netflix's live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender. Toph is blind, blunt and the strongest earthbender in any room she walks into, and the role only works if the actor refuses every opportunity for self-pity that the writing offers. It is a considerable ask for a performer still early in a career, and the credits suggest the work is only accelerating.
Movies (6)
TV (3)
Where to start with Miyako
Toph is the biggest and most sharply defined role she has been handed, so Avatar: The Last Airbender is the sensible first stop, and the live-action series needs a character with that much attitude in it.
Go back to The Darkest Minds next. It is the film that started everything and the one where she has the least dialogue and the most to do with her face, which is a useful thing to see a young actor manage.
Rim of the World is the pure kids-on-bikes adventure and by some distance the silliest thing here. Are You Afraid of the Dark? is a decent modern pass at the anthology format.
For range rather than genre, You Are So Not Invited to My Bat Mitzvah gives her a comic register the science-fiction work never asks for, and Always Be My Maybe casts her as the young Sasha, a small part but an easy one to spot.