Daisy Ridley’s is the perfect rags-to-riches story. Ridley, who attended a performing arts institute in the north of London, said that she struggled a few years after graduating before her big break as an actor. She went from serving beer for a minimal wage to wielding a lightsaber for a multibillion-dollar film series in just a few years’ time. But just a few years ago, Ridley was still employed as a bartender in a London pub, earning less than $10 per hour.
At the time, she had just obtained that life-altering position. Ridley told Jimmy Fallon on NBC’s The Tonight Show in November 2017:
“Not to float my own boat, but I’m a really good bartender, because I worked in two different pubs for, like a year-and-a-half, in a rowdy London district.”
An unbelievable stroke of luck
Daisy Ridley, 27, began working behind the bar in London pubs when she was just 20 years old and only stopped when she earned her breakthrough role in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Prior to that announcement in April 2014, Ridley had only gotten little parts in short films and British television series like Casualty and Mr. Selfridge.
Ridley nearly didn’t believe it when she was cast as Rey. She told The New York Times—
“J.J. rang me. And it’s weird, because I thought I was still half-auditioning. I thought I had to convince him. I was like, ‘I could totally do this.’ Thinking, ‘I can’t do this.’ And then he told me and I’m pretty sure I was like: ‘Are you sure? Are you sure?'”
Ridley disclosed a warning J.J. Abrams gave her regarding the Star Wars series in an interview with The Guardian in 2019. According to Ridley, Abrams said to her,
“‘This is not a role in a movie. This is a religion for people. It changes things on a level that is inconceivable.'”
Up, up, and Above – How Daisy Ridley’s life changed
Ridley, in an interview with The Guardian, said that ever since she took on the character of Rey, there have been quite a few challenges that she has faced. She said,
“It’s been hard at points. I have a thing with control, but it does get a bit easier. I texted my friend the other day and I was, like: ‘Dude, please don’t put pictures of me online.’ Because it’s that weird disconnect, that people don’t ask people’s permission before they post things.”
The actress has stopped using social media and started therapy because she appreciates her privacy. She insists that her friends put their phones away when they go out with her.
“I’m like: ‘You can’t say where we are, not just because it’s me – because it’s not safe.’ My friend has 50,000 followers and you’re telling 50,000 people where you are right at that moment? That’s scary,” Ridley told The Guardian. “I’m not passively aggressive – I’m just directly aggressive. It is a bit uncomfortable, because obviously I don’t want to say to my friend, ‘Please don’t do that.’ But I’m not the one who should be feeling uncomfortable.”
Ridley also expressed her gratitude for the chances that Star Wars provided for her.
Source: The Guardian
