Daisy Ridley is opening up about the anxiety she experienced after landing the role of Rey in the most recent "Star Wars" trilogy.
Speaking with Inverse, the 31-year-old actor shared how her life changed drastically 10 years ago when she was offered the role by director J.J. Abrams. She recalled Abrams saying, "Understand the scale. This is not a role in a movie. This is a religion for people. It changes things on a level that is inconceivable."
"When all of the craziness was going on, I was like, 'I'm good. I'm good. I'm coping fine. Everything's fine.' And I was fine, for the most part. But I think what I was really grappling with was that it was my normal, but it was not normal to other people," Ridley told the outlet.
The actor admitted she began to isolate herself due to the pressure.
"For friends and family, or any people who see something in a slightly different way than you do, there's this projection of you, and you in that world, and how it feels to do this and that," she said. "And you're like, 'Well, actually, I'm just a human being, separate from that.' It's quite this wrestle, of the reality and the fantasy that's often projected onto you."
After "The Last Jedi" premiered in 2017, the anxiety was so severe that Ridley developed "holes in her stomach wall," resulting in her taking a six-month sabbatical before returning to film "The Rise of Skywalker," marking the trilogy finale.
"After the last Star Wars came out and everything was quiet, I was like, 'What the [expletive]?' I was grieving," Ridley said.
She was forced to take time to focus on self care and overcome her anxiety when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
"Having to sit and just be still in lockdown was incredibly helpful, in a way I hadn't anticipated," she said. "I realized there was a lot that I hadn't processed properly."
In 2020, Ridley also spoke about how anxiety impacted her health during an interview with GQ.
"I saw a picture of me at the London premiere [for 'The Last Jedi'] and I was so skinny and my skin was terrible," she said at the time. "My body was just f***** up. I got tests done and it turned out my body was taking in no nutrients. I was just like a little skeleton and I was just so tired. I was becoming a ghost."
Zoe Papadakis ✉
Zoe Papadakis is a Newsmax writer based in South Africa with two decades of experience specializing in media and entertainment. She has been in the news industry as a reporter, writer and editor for newspapers, magazine and websites.