Daisy Ridley

• 1. Introduction

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  Daisy Jazz Isobel Ridley was born on the 10th of April 1992 in the London borough of Westminster, and in April 2014 the world learned her name in connection with one of the most anticipated films in cinematic history. She had been, as Rolling Stone put it, a "total unknown" when director J. J. Abrams chose her to play Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Before that announcement, she had spent more than a year pulling pints at two different London pubs, waiting for something to break her way.

  How does a bartender from Maida Vale become the face of a franchise worth billions? And what happens to a person once the whole world is watching?

• 2. Roots and Formation

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  The Ridley family tree reaches back in directions that turn out to be surprisingly relevant to Daisy's career. Her paternal great-uncle, Arnold Ridley, served in the military but is best remembered as the playwright and actor who played Private Godfrey in the British sitcom Dad's Army. Arnold's brother, Daisy's grandfather John Harry Dunn Ridley, OBE, headed the Engineering Secretariat at the BBC from 1950 to 1965.

  On her mother's side, the Fawkner-Corbetts were landed gentry with military and medical backgrounds. Her father Christopher worked as a photographer; her mother Louise handled internal communications for a bank. Daisy is the youngest of three daughters and also has two older half-sisters.

  From age nine to eighteen, she attended Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Hertfordshire on a scholarship. After leaving Tring, she enrolled to study classical civilisation at Birkbeck, University of London, before dropping out to focus on acting. When roles were slow to arrive, she worked those pub shifts. In 2016, after Star Wars had made her famous, she quietly enrolled in a BA in social science through online courses with the Open University.

• 3. Before the Galaxy

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  Television was where Ridley learned her trade, moving through small parts in Youngers, Toast of London, Silent Witness, Mr. Selfridge, and the long-running medical drama Casualty. She appeared in Blue Season, a short film entered into the Sci-Fi-London 48-Hour Film Challenge. A more substantial early credit was Lifesaver, an interactive film in which she played the lead role; the project earned a BAFTA nomination.

  She also turned up in the music video for Wiley's song "Lights On", playing a character called Kim. Her official film debut came in 2015 in Scrawl, a British independent horror film; her scenes for The Inbetweeners 2 were cut before that comedy reached cinemas.

  When her Star Wars casting was confirmed in February 2014 and announced publicly in April of that year, she began filming her scenes in May 2014 at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire. Before the film opened in December 2015, she appeared at the launch of a set of Royal Mail Star Wars postage stamps, with her character Rey sharing a stamp with the droid BB-8.

• 4. Two Billion Dollars

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  The Force Awakens earned international revenues of over two billion dollars, making it the highest-grossing film of 2015. Film critic Richard Roeper described Ridley's work as "a breakout performance" and noted that Harrison Ford shared "a terrific father figure chemistry" with both Ridley and her co-star John Boyega. Abrams' choice to cast a little-known actor echoed George Lucas' original approach for the first Star Wars film in 1977.

  The sequel trilogy continued with Star Wars: The Last Jedi in December 2017, in which Ridley reprised her role opposite Mark Hamill as Luke Skywalker. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker arrived in December 2019, closing out the trilogy. At that point she said she couldn't imagine returning: "I don't think anything could top The Rise of Skywalker for this character." She left the door open regardless, adding, "never say never. I'm always open to a revisit."

  On the 7th of April 2023, at Star Wars Celebration, it was announced that Ridley would return as Rey in an upcoming untitled film directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, with Ridley appearing on stage to confirm the news.

• 5. Life Beyond Rey

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  Between Star Wars instalments, Ridley built a career that ranged from Agatha Christie to Hamlet. In Murder on the Orient Express in 2017, directed by and starring Kenneth Branagh, she played Mary Debenham; production had begun in London in November 2016. In January 2018 she took the title role in Ophelia, a reimagining of the Hamlet story shot between April and July 2017, alongside Naomi Watts and Clive Owen; the film debuted at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival.

  She voiced Cottontail in Peter Rabbit in February 2018, the animated adaptation of Beatrix Potter's stories. Her voice also carried the lead role in the point-and-click mystery game Twelve Minutes in 2021, alongside James McAvoy and Willem Dafoe; critics praised her performance. She voiced a character in the French stop motion film The Inventor, released in the United States on the 15th of September 2023.

  In Sometimes I Think About Dying, shot in Astoria, Oregon during 2021-22, she served not only as the lead but also as a first-time main producer, with Rachel Lambert directing. She starred in Young Woman and the Sea for Walt Disney Pictures, playing the real swimmer Gertrude Ederle, and took an executive producer credit there as well. Magpie, a contemporary noir thriller she starred in, was written by her partner Tom Bateman and based on a story idea that originated with Ridley herself.

• 6. Health and Private Life

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  In 2016, Ridley disclosed that at age fifteen she had been diagnosed with endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome, conditions that required multiple laparoscopic surgery procedures. She has spoken about the acne that followed and the effect it had on her self-confidence. In 2023, she was diagnosed with Graves' disease, an autoimmune condition that produced a racing heart rate, weight loss, and fatigue. She has followed a vegan diet since at least 2017 and went gluten-free after the Graves' disease diagnosis.

  Ridley lives in Primrose Hill, London. She met actor Tom Bateman on the set of Murder on the Orient Express in 2017, and they have been together since. During the Sundance Film Festival in January 2023, she confirmed that they had married.

• 7. The Social Media Question

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  After the 2016 Teen Choice Awards, which paid tribute to victims of gun violence, Ridley posted an anti-gun-violence message on Instagram and Facebook. The backlash was swift; critics accused her of hypocrisy given the violence depicted in her Star Wars films. She deleted her accounts, though she offered a different explanation publicly, citing a "busy few months ahead" and a desire for fewer distractions.

  In 2017 she elaborated, saying social media is "highly unhealthy for people's mental health," including her own. A 2019 interview produced a longer statement: "I honestly think now with social media and stuff...it's great to have freedom of expression, but I do feel like people think opinions have so much weight... I don't really think bad vibes should have the sun shone on them."

  On the 4th of April 2022, she returned to Instagram after six years away, posting a video of herself sipping tea, describing her return as the start of her "Year of Yes." Her Orient Express co-star Leslie Odom Jr. and Chewbacca actor Joonas Suotamo welcomed her back. In July 2023, she was announced as the host of a True Spies podcast miniseries focused on Lee Harvey Oswald, a role that put her voice to work in a very different register.