Star Wars star Daisy Ridley revealed she turned to therapy to deal with the intense fame after starring as Rey in 2015’s The Force Awakens.
The 25-year-old told Vogue that she was woefully underprepared for how appearing in the behemoth franchise would affect her. It was her first film (director J.J. Abrams had been determined to cast an unknown) and is nothing short of a religion to some people (or UPFs – Ultra Passionate Fans, as she quotes co-star Mark Hamill saying).
“Everything was so confusing,” she said. “People were recognising me—I still don’t know how to handle it. My skin got really bad because I was stressed. It was crippling. I just felt so seen and so self-conscious.
“[One time] I heard a knock on the door. These two guys went, ‘Hey, Daisy, can I get an autograph?’ and I literally went, ‘No fucking way.’ My mum said to me, ‘Everyone’s trying to take ownership of you.’
“I went and saw a lovely lady. I felt like I was sort of reducing myself because I was so worried that people would recognise me. [Then I thought], ‘You know what? I want to dance through life. I don’t want to scuttle’.”
She says it was Carrie Fisher who warned her of dating after entering the Star Wars universe, tearing up as she remembered the late actress.
“I’d never met anyone who was openly bipolar before, who discussed loving glitter because of her LSD days. [She told me it was hard to date afterwards] because you don’t want to give people the ability to say, ‘I had sex with Princess Leia‘.”
Fair enough – although there’s perhaps no actress and a role so forever intertwined as Carrie Fisher and Princess Leia. As she wrote in her autobiography The Princess Diarist:
“I had never been Princess Leia before and now I would be her forever. I would never not be Princess Leia. I had no idea how profoundly true that was and how long forever was.”
The Last Jedi opens in cinemas on December 15, and we absolutely cannot wait.
