Posted in: Movies, Star Wars | Tagged: 12 minutes, daisy ridley, Hayden Christensen, jake lloyd, mark hamill, star wars, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, The Rise of Skywalker, Twelve Minutes

Star Wars: Daisy Ridley Struggled Finding Roles After Films

If there's anything Daisy Ridley and Mark Hamill have in common these days is finding relevance after their time leading the Star Wars franchise. The actress spoke to Entertainment Weekly about her brief post-franchise life since The Rise of Skywalker in 2019. How she didn't get the boost in her career, she expected while promoting her latest project in the video game Twelve Minutes. Keeping things in perspective, this is the three month period before productions shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic. "It was so sad to finish [Star Wars]," Ridley said. "When the film was released, I was like, 'Oh my God.' It was such a huge chapter. And, weirdly, the past few months of not having much… Obviously, now it's really nice to be working, but not having much [at the time] I feel like I processed the last five years. To be forced to slow down, it was good mentally for me because [Star Wars was] a big thing in my life." The actress went through the motions in auditions at the start of 2020. "Weirdly, at the beginning of the year, nothing was coming through," she continued. "I was like, 'Aww! No one wants to employ me.'" Finding out she wasn't cast; the actress started to become self-conscious.

"I had that moment of 'Oh my god!' and then just thought 'everything in its right time,'" Ridley said. When it came to Hamill, the actor didn't reap the benefit from the franchise the way since Return of the Jedi (1983) as his costar Harrison Ford. Then again, Ford did already have another franchise in Indiana Jones, secured the lead in Blade Runner (1982) and regularly starring in feature films. In fact, Hamill stayed largely away from the camera save for an appearance in 1986's Amazing Stories on television. He's largely been doing voiceover work and primarily taking minor live-action roles. He did return to top billing in the Star Wars sequels.

The career of Anakin Skywalker actors Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen also fell to the wayside since their turn in the franchise. Lloyd's career halted from the backlash from The Phantom Menace, and Christensen largely remained to do indie work and smaller productions never getting any career boost from Star Wars compared to the more-established costars Ewan McGregor and Natalie Portman. By the end of February and into March, she got the call about the time loop game Twelve Minutes from Annapurna Interactive. Ridley provides the voice of a woman living with her husband, voiced by James McAvoy. Both witness a gun-toting stranger (voice of Willem Dafoe) burst into his apartment to attack the wife for some past grievance. The man is forced to relive the same 12-minutes until the player can piece the mystery together and stop it. In the meantime, like Hamill, Ridley's finding her share in voiceover work and audiobooks to make do during the quarantine even if live-action roles aren't ripe for the picking. "There's one thing that I'm gonna do that's super f—ing dark," she teases. "I was like, 'Do we need something this dark?' But it's also really interesting and about memory, and everything's a bit fragmented. I definitely feel like what I wanna watch, and I guess be part of is something with some joy. That's what people need." Twelve Minutes is slated for release on PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X. Check out the cast reveal trailer below.

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