English actress Daisy Ridley stormed the limelight as Rey in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh film in the Skywalker Saga. Upon reprising the role in 2017’s The Last Jedi and 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, the Londoner consolidated her claim to fame as a talented performer and a bonafide movie star. In between the Star Wars films, the British actress starred in Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express and Claire McCarthy’s Ophelia. Since then, she has portrayed Viola Eade in Chaos Walking, Helena Pelletier in The Marsh King’s Daughter, and produced Sometimes I Think About Dying.
While it seems her career is barely getting started, Daisy Ridley has been nominated for some of the most coveted awards in the industry. The Forces Awakens won her the 2016 Empire Awards for Best Female Newcomer and the MTV Movie Awards for Best Breakthrough Performance. An onlooker might conclude the movie star has a perfect life, but Ridley has had a fair share of life troubles. She underwent multiple surgeries after she was diagnosed with endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome at age 15. The health challenge left her with a poor sense of self-value, but the actress successfully pulled herself back up and is back to dominating the silver screen.
Daisy Ridley Started Taking Acting Seriously At Age 17
The youngest of three daughters born to her parents, Daisy Ridley grew up an active child. To keep her busy, she was enrolled at Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Hertfordshire, where she eventually fell in love with acting. She attended the school from age 9 to 18 but didn’t take acting seriously until she was 17. This was after a drama teacher made her realize she could accomplish whatever she desired as long as she believed in herself. In an interview with GQ, Ridley recalls the drama teacher correcting a classmate who expressed she didn’t have the proper accent to play Lady Macbeth. “At 17, hearing this man say, ‘You can f**king do it if you want to’ was so amazing,” she said. The optimistic approach of the teacher made Ridley embrace acting, and the rest is history.
She Was Fired From Her First Acting Gig
Daisy Ridley had a rough start; she was fired from her first acting gig after she decided to become a professional actor. “I was actually sacked from my first job,” she told Elle in a 2015 interview. “It was at a workshop for a short film this poet had written about when she used to work in a strip club. After the first week, I was told not to come back,” she divulged. Ridley was confused about the unceremonious dismissal at the time, but in 2019, she told GQ she later realized why she was axed. “I hadn’t done a good job. But, you know, … It’s all part of the journey,” stated The Last Jedi actress.
Daisy Ridley Didn’t Know How To Stay Grounded When She Became Famous
Playing Rey in The Force Awakens earned Daisy Ridley the attention she needed to push her career forward, but it came with a price that left the English actress feeling helpless. Her newfound fame exposed her to public scrutiny, taking away the privacy of a regular life. It was only a matter of time before she became disillusioned with her never-ending efforts to evade paparazzi and fans interfering with her daily life at every turn. Ridley eventually realized she didn’t know how to deal with fame and began therapy to stay grounded. This was partly why she deleted her social media accounts in August 2016. The actress has insisted that social media is unhealthy for her mental health, even though she returned to Instagram in April 2022.
She’s A Martial Artist With A Green Belt In Kickboxing
Daisy Ridley started working out regularly after she was cast in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. When the official training for shooting began, it led the actress toward the path of a martial artist. Ridley took up kickboxing while training for the film and eventually earned a green belt in the combat sport. During an appearance on Live with Kelly and Mark, Ridley revealed that her kickboxing training has helped her become comfortable with people in her space.
“I have a real thing about people being too close to me,” she said as she explained why she went for the green belt. “It was great because initially, we were just working on people being in my space, and apparently, I’m a little tougher now… That was something that I wanted to work on anyway, just to be a bit more comfortable, and then I trained for my green belt,” added the actress.
Daisy Ridley Secretly Married English Actor Tom Bateman
Privacy is meaningful for the English actress, and she’s made a point about that over the years. Daisy Ridley is married to Tom Bateman, her Murder on the Orient Express co-star. The duo met on the set of the mystery film and began dating in 2017. They kept the relationship under the radar, but keeping the media away became hard, especially when they started living together in 2019. The actress was first spotted with a diamond ring on her engagement finger that year. Reports of their secret wedding in 2020 were widely treated as a rumor until Ridley confirmed it in January 2023. “Yes! I got married,” she casually confirmed in an interview with Rolling Stone.
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