Daisy Ridley: The Life Story Behind Star Wars' Rey

What happens to a person when the biggest film franchise on earth picks her out of nowhere, hands her a lightsaber, and expects her to carry it for five years? Daisy Ridley found out at 22, and the answer is more complicated than the premiere photos suggest. Before the casting announcement in April 2014, almost nobody outside a few London casting rooms knew her name. She had done a handful of television episodes, a few short films, and a music video. Eighteen months later, she was the heroine of the highest-grossing film of all time in North America, her face was on lunchboxes, and millions of children were dressing as her for Halloween. The strange part is not that she survived it. The strange part is that she survived it while being honest about how hard it was, and then rebuilt a career on her own terms once the trilogy ended.

The Audition She Was Not Allowed to Talk About

Ridley has described the casting process for Star Wars: The Force Awakens as one of the most stressful experiences of her life, and the details explain why. She auditioned over several months in 2014 without knowing exactly which part she was reading for, because the production kept the script and the character details secret even from the actors trying out. Thousands of young actresses were seen for the role of Rey, and the process involved repeated callbacks, screen tests, and long silences between rounds in which nobody told her anything. When she was finally cast, the news was kept quiet until the official announcement, and even then she could say almost nothing about the character. She has said that the secrecy made the whole experience feel unreal, as if she had been chosen for something she was not allowed to understand yet. That is a strange way to start a career, and it shaped the years that followed: from the beginning, her most famous job was also the one she was least free to discuss.

Westminster, Maida Vale, and Tring Park

Westminster in London gives 10 April 1992 as Daisy Ridley’s birth date, and Maida Vale, a quiet residential area of west London, is where she spent her childhood. Her father, Chris Ridley, worked as a photographer, and her mother, Louise, worked in banking, so the household mixed a creative profession with a practical one. She was the youngest of three sisters, and her great-uncle was Arnold Ridley, the actor and playwright best known for playing Private Godfrey in the BBC comedy Dad’s Army. That family connection is often mentioned as if it explains her career, but it is worth being careful: Arnold Ridley died in 1984, eight years before Daisy was born, so the link is a matter of family history rather than mentorship. What her childhood did give her was a household where performance was not treated as a fantasy. She attended the Tring Park School for the Performing Arts in Hertfordshire, a boarding school that trains young people in acting, singing, and dance, and she studied musical theatre there, graduating in 2010. Tring Park is a demanding place, and the training is broad: students learn to sing, to dance, and to act, often in the same week, and the discipline of that schedule shows up later in the way Ridley handles physical roles. She left school at 18 with a real skill set and no famous name, which meant the next few years would be spent auditioning like everyone else.

Casualty, Youngers, and Toast of London

The years between graduation and Star Wars were spent in the ordinary grind of a young British actress. Ridley appeared in single episodes of long-running television series, the kind of work that pays the rent and teaches an actor how a set actually functions. She played in Casualty, the BBC hospital drama, and in Youngers, a comedy-drama about teenagers in south London, and in Toast of London, Matt Berry’s surreal comedy about a voiceover artist, where she played a small part that showed she could handle comedy as well as drama. She also appeared in Silent Witness and in Mr Selfridge, the ITV period drama about the founder of the Selfridges department store. None of these parts was large, and none of them made her famous, but they did something important: they proved to casting directors that she was reliable, professional, and capable of adjusting to very different kinds of material. She also appeared in short films and in a music video for the rapper Wiley, work that kept her visible in the small London industry where casting directors talk to each other. By 2014, she had a solid, unremarkable CV, which is exactly what made the Star Wars casting so surprising. She was not a star being handed a franchise; she was a working actress who had been auditioning for years, and the franchise chose her over thousands of others.

Rey, the Desert, and Five Years Inside a Trilogy

The Force Awakens opened in December 2015, and its scale is hard to overstate. The film earned more than two billion dollars worldwide, and Ridley’s Rey — a scavenger on the desert planet Jakku who discovers she is strong in the Force — became the centre of the new trilogy. Rey’s story across the three films is a coming-of-age story dressed as space opera: she leaves Jakku, trains with Luke Skywalker, confronts Kylo Ren, and finally learns that she is the granddaughter of Emperor Palpatine, a revelation that reframes everything she believed about herself. Ridley played all of it, including the lightsaber fights, which required months of physical training, and the emotional scenes opposite Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Adam Driver, actors with decades more experience. The Last Jedi followed in 2017, directed by Rian Johnson, and The Rise of Skywalker closed the trilogy in 2019, directed by J. J. Abrams. The films were not without controversy — fans argued fiercely about Rey’s parentage and the direction of the story — but Ridley’s performance was rarely the target of the criticism. What the trilogy cost her was privacy and time: five years in which every interview was about Star Wars, every public appearance was measured against the character, and every new project had to wait until the trilogy was finished.

Murder on the Orient Express, Ophelia, and Chaos Walking

While the trilogy was still running, Ridley began building a second career in films that had nothing to do with Star Wars. In 2017 she played Mary Debenham in Murder on the Orient Express, Kenneth Branagh’s adaptation of the Agatha Christie novel, acting alongside a large ensemble that included Johnny Depp, Judi Dench, and Michelle Pfeiffer. The part was small but it put her in a different kind of film: a period mystery where the acting is in the dialogue and the glances rather than in the action. In 2018 she took the title role in Ophelia, a retelling of Hamlet from Ophelia’s point of view, directed by Claire McCarthy. Playing Ophelia as a thinking, choosing character rather than a tragic victim was a deliberate choice, and the film gave Ridley a chance to carry a drama on her own, without a lightsaber or a franchise behind her. Chaos Walking followed in 2021, a science-fiction film directed by Doug Liman in which she played Viola opposite Tom Holland. The film had a troubled production and a long delay before release, and it did not succeed commercially, but it showed that Ridley was willing to take risks on difficult material rather than only accepting safe offers. She also narrated The Eagle Huntress, a 2016 documentary about a 13-year-old girl in Mongolia who trains eagles, a job that used her voice rather than her face and showed a different side of her work.

Young Woman and the Sea, Magpie, and Producing Her Own Work

The most interesting phase of Ridley’s career began after the trilogy ended, when she started choosing projects that she could shape herself. In 2024 she starred in Young Woman and the Sea, a Disney film about Gertrude Ederle, the American swimmer who in 1926 became the first woman to swim the English Channel. Ederle’s story is a remarkable one — she crossed the Channel in 14 hours and 31 minutes, beating the men’s record by almost two hours — and Ridley trained extensively for the swimming scenes, which were filmed in open water. The film was released on Disney+, and critics praised both the story and Ridley’s performance. The same year she starred in Magpie, a thriller she also produced, playing a mother whose life unravels when her husband casts a young actress in his film. Producing matters here, because it means Ridley is no longer only waiting for offers; she is helping to create the work she wants to do. She also starred in The Marsh King’s Daughter in 2023, a thriller based on Karen Dionne’s novel, playing a woman whose father was a kidnapper and who must confront him when he escapes from prison. These are darker, smaller films than Star Wars, and they show an actress who is interested in complicated women rather than in repeating the role that made her famous.

Endometriosis, Graves’ Disease, and Talking About Health in Public

Ridley has been unusually open about her health, and that openness is part of her public story. She has spoken about being diagnosed with endometriosis, a condition in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside it, causing pain and other symptoms, and about polycystic ovary syndrome, which she has said affected her skin and her confidence as a teenager. In 2024 she revealed that she had been diagnosed with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune condition that affects the thyroid and can cause fatigue, weight changes, and anxiety. She said the diagnosis came after she had been feeling unwell and had initially put the symptoms down to the stress of a demanding role. Talking about these conditions in public is not something every actor does, and Ridley has said she did it partly because she wished someone had told her about them earlier. Her willingness to discuss health has made her a figure that fans with similar conditions look to, and it has added a dimension to her public image that has nothing to do with Star Wars: she is someone who treats her audience as adults and trusts them with difficult information.

A New Star Wars Film and the Question of Going Back

In 2023, at the Star Wars Celebration event in London, Lucasfilm announced that Ridley would return as Rey in a new film directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, set after the events of The Rise of Skywalker. The announcement was a surprise, because Ridley had spent the years since 2019 building a career away from the franchise, and returning to it is a decision with real consequences. A new Rey film would put her back at the centre of the largest fan conversation in cinema, with all the scrutiny that comes with it, and it would also give her the chance to shape the character’s future in a way the sequel trilogy never quite allowed. As of the time of writing, the film remains in development, and Ridley has spoken about it cautiously, saying she is excited but aware of what the role demands. The question she faces is the same one she faced in 2014, only in reverse: then, Star Wars was a door opening; now, it is a door she has already walked through, and she has to decide whether to walk through it again. Whatever she decides, the choice will be hers in a way the first casting never was, because this time she knows exactly what she is agreeing to.

The Short Films, the Voice Roles, and the Work Nobody Headlines

Between the big films there is a quieter list of credits that says a lot about how Ridley actually works. Before Star Wars, she appeared in short films with titles that never reached cinemas, the kind of work young actors do because the script is good and the director is promising, not because it pays. After Star Wars, she kept doing that kind of work in a different form: voice roles in animation and in the Star Wars animated series, where she returned as Rey in Forces of Destiny, a set of short episodes that gave the character small adventures outside the films. Voice work is a useful test of an actor, because the audience cannot see the face, and the performance has to live entirely in the timing and the tone. Ridley has also done narration, most notably for The Eagle Huntress, where her voice carries a documentary about a Mongolian girl and her eagle across mountains and festivals. These jobs do not make headlines, and they do not appear on posters, but they are the connective tissue of a working career: they keep an actor sharp, they keep relationships with directors alive, and they show that the person is interested in the work itself rather than only in the size of the audience. Ridley has also kept a low profile on social media compared with many actors of her generation, and she has spoken about the pressure that online attention puts on young performers. That choice fits the same pattern as the rest of her post-trilogy career: she does the work, she talks about it when there is something to say, and she does not perform her life for an audience that has already seen enough of her as Rey.

Sometimes I Think About Dying, Peter Rabbit, and Life Off Instagram

In 2018, Ridley voiced Cottontail in Peter Rabbit, the animated film based on Beatrix Potter’s stories, a job that used her voice rather than her face and that showed a lighter side of her work. Voice roles in family films are a useful test of an actor, because the audience cannot see the performer, and the character has to live entirely in the timing and the tone. Cottontail is a small, energetic rabbit, and Ridley’s voice work gave the character a warmth that the animation alone could not provide. The film was a commercial success, and it led to a sequel, Peter Rabbit 2: The Runaway, in 2021, in which she returned as Cottontail. These are not the films that define her career, but they are the films that show she is willing to work in different forms, and that she does not take herself too seriously. She has also done voice work in the Star Wars animated series and in video games, jobs that keep an actor’s voice sharp and that show a commitment to the franchise that goes beyond the films.

In 2023 she starred in Sometimes I Think About Dying, a film directed by Rachel Lambert and based on a play by Kevin Armento, playing Fran, a young woman who works in an office in a small Oregon town and who spends her days daydreaming about her own death. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, and it is a quiet, strange, funny film about loneliness, and about what happens when a person who has given up on life meets someone who makes her want to live. Ridley’s performance is built on stillness: Fran barely speaks, she barely moves, and the audience watches a woman who is disappearing into herself. It is the most adult role she has played, and it is the furthest from Rey that she has ever been, which is exactly why it matters. She has said the film was important to her, and that she was drawn to it because it was about a person who feels invisible, a feeling she knows from her own experience of fame, where a person can be seen by millions and still feel unseen. The film did not find a large audience, but it was praised by critics, and it showed that Ridley is interested in small, difficult films, not only in large ones.

Ridley’s relationship with social media is another part of her story that deserves attention. She left Instagram in 2016, after posting about gun violence following the Orlando nightclub shooting and receiving abusive responses, and she has spoken about the decision as a necessary one. She has said that the platform made her anxious, and that the abuse she received was not worth the connection it offered. That decision was unusual at the time, because most young actors were building their careers on social media, and leaving it was seen as a risk. Ridley took the risk, and she has kept a low profile online ever since, which is a choice that fits the same pattern as the rest of her career: she does the work, she talks about it when there is something to say, and she does not perform her life for an audience. The decision to leave Instagram is, in a small way, the same decision she made when she left the law of Star Wars behind and chose smaller films: a decision to protect herself, and to keep the work separate from the noise that surrounds it.

The Awards: the Empire, the BAFTA Rising Star, and the Saturn

The awards Ridley received for The Force Awakens tell the story of a breakthrough in miniature. She won the Empire Award for Best Female Newcomer in 2016, a prize voted for by the readers of Empire magazine, which is a sign that the audience, not only the critics, had noticed her. She was nominated for the EE Rising Star Award at the BAFTA ceremony in 2016, a nomination that put her alongside the most promising young actors in Britain, and she was nominated for the MTV Movie Award for Best Breakthrough Performance. She also won the Saturn Award for Best Actress for The Force Awakens, a prize given by the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films, which is a recognition from the genre community that had embraced her. These were the honours of a debut, and they arrived quickly, but Ridley has treated them as a beginning rather than as an arrival, which is the attitude that has kept her career moving forward instead of standing still.

The Marsh King’s Daughter was filmed in Ontario, Canada, and directed by Neil Burger, and it is based on Karen Dionne’s 2017 novel of the same name. The story follows Helena, a woman whose father kidnapped her mother and raised her in a remote cabin, and who must confront him when he escapes from prison. The film is a thriller, but its subject is family: Helena is a mother herself, and the question the film asks is whether a person can escape the family they were born into, or whether the past will always catch up with them. Ridley played Helena as a woman who is, at once, strong and frightened, and the performance is built on the tension between those two things. The film did not find a large audience, but it showed that Ridley is interested in stories about women who survive difficult childhoods, a subject she knows from her own work, and from the characters she has played.

My Take:

The thing I keep coming back to with Daisy Ridley is how young she was when the whole machine landed on her, and how little help the machine actually gave her. She was 22 when she was cast, and the casting process itself was secretive to the point of cruelty: months of auditions for a part she was not allowed to know about, followed by a global announcement that turned her into a public figure overnight. Most people, at 22, are still figuring out how to pay rent. Ridley was figuring out how to answer questions about a film she had not finished shooting, in front of cameras that would broadcast her answers to every country on earth. That she came out of it as a functioning adult with a clear sense of what she wants is, to me, the most impressive part of her story, more impressive than any single performance.

I think the trilogy itself was both a gift and a trap, and Ridley understood that faster than most people in her position do. The gift is obvious: money, fame, a place in film history, and the chance to play a heroine that millions of girls grew up admiring. The trap is subtler. When you play a character that large, the industry starts to see you as the character, and every new script that arrives is a version of Rey with a different name. The way out of that trap is to do work that is as different as possible, as quickly as possible, and Ridley did exactly that: a period murder mystery, a Shakespeare retelling, a thriller about a swimmer, a film she produced herself. None of those films made Star Wars money, and that is the point. They were not meant to. They were meant to prove, to herself and to directors, that she could do other things, and they did.

Ophelia is the film I would point to if someone asked me whether Ridley can actually act, rather than whether she can hold a lightsaber. The film itself is uneven, and it did not find a large audience, but her performance in it is thoughtful in a way that the Star Wars films never asked her to be. Ophelia in her version is not a victim waiting to drown; she is a young woman making choices in a court full of dangerous men, and Ridley plays the intelligence of the character without making a show of it. That is a hard thing to do, because the audience already knows how the story ends, and the actor has to make them care about the journey anyway. She manages it, and the fact that the film was not a hit does not change the quality of what she did in it.

Young Woman and the Sea is the other performance I would defend strongly, because it shows what Ridley can do when the material is strong and the production gives her room. Gertrude Ederle is a real person with a real achievement, and the film asks Ridley to be physically convincing as an athlete and emotionally convincing as a woman fighting a society that did not want her to succeed. The swimming scenes are genuinely demanding, and the fact that she did so much of the work herself matters: the audience can tell when an actor is faking exertion, and Ridley does not fake it. The film was released on streaming rather than in cinemas, which limited its audience, and I think that was a shame, because it is the kind of old-fashioned inspirational story that deserves a big screen. But the performance is there for anyone who watches it, and it is the best argument that her career after Star Wars is not a decline but a redirection.

Her openness about her health is something I respect more than almost anything else in her public life. She did not have to tell anyone about endometriosis, or about polycystic ovary syndrome, or about Graves’ disease. She could have kept all of it private, and nobody would have blamed her. Instead, she talked about it plainly, in interviews where she could have been talking about her films, and she did it in a way that was practical rather than dramatic: here is what happened, here is what it felt like, here is what I wish I had known. That kind of honesty helps real people, and it costs the person telling the story something, because once you have said it in public, it becomes part of how you are described forever. Ridley accepted that cost, and I think it tells you more about her character than any red-carpet appearance could.

The return to Star Wars is the decision I am least sure about, and I want to be honest about that. On one hand, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is a serious director, and a film about Rey rebuilding the Jedi Order could give Ridley the kind of story the sequel trilogy never quite delivered: a character who is no longer a student, but a teacher, making decisions that matter. On the other hand, the Star Wars fan conversation has become one of the most hostile places in popular culture, and Ridley has already lived through one round of it. Going back means volunteering for another round, and the film will be judged not on its own merits but against thirty years of expectations. If I were advising her, I would tell her to do it only if the script is genuinely good, and to walk away if it is not, because she has already proved she does not need Star Wars. She has a career now that stands on its own, and the franchise needs her more than she needs it.

What I like most about Ridley’s recent work is the producing. Magpie is not a perfect film, but the fact that she produced it matters, because producing means she is no longer only answering the question of what roles are offered to her. She is asking a different question: what stories do I want to exist? That is the question that separates actors who have long careers from actors who have a famous five years and then fade. The actors who last are usually the ones who start making their own work, and Ridley has started. If she keeps going in that direction, the next decade of her career could be more interesting than the last one, because she will be choosing the material instead of waiting for it.

There is also something to be said about her relationship with fame itself. She has never seemed comfortable with it, and she has said so in interviews, which is unusual. Most actors pretend to enjoy the attention, or at least pretend it does not bother them. Ridley has been frank that the attention after Star Wars was overwhelming, and that she needed time to adjust. That frankness is refreshing, and it is also smart, because it sets expectations honestly. An audience that knows you find fame difficult is more likely to give you space than an audience that thinks you love every minute of it. She has managed, in a small way, to renegotiate the terms of her own celebrity, and that is a skill that has nothing to do with acting and everything to do with survival.

Looking at the whole picture, I think Daisy Ridley’s story is still in its early chapters, and that is the most important thing to say about her. She is in her early thirties, she has already played one of the most famous characters in cinema history, and she has spent the years since then proving that she is more than that character. The films she has chosen since 2019 are not all successes, and some of them, like Chaos Walking, were genuine disappointments. But the pattern of the choices is clear, and it is a good pattern: real women, difficult stories, physical commitment, and a willingness to produce her own work. If she keeps choosing like that, and if the new Star Wars film gives Rey the ending the character deserves, her career will look very different in ten years than it does now, and it will look better. The girl from Maida Vale who auditioned in secret for a part she was not allowed to name has become an actress who names her own terms, and that, more than any lightsaber, is the achievement worth watching.

For anyone who only knows her as Rey, my advice is to watch Young Woman and the Sea first, because it is the film where she is most fully herself as an actor, and then watch Ophelia, because it shows her thinking on screen. After that, listen to her narration in The Eagle Huntress, which is a reminder that her voice alone can carry a story. Those three pieces of work, taken together, give you a much fuller picture than the trilogy does, and they are the best guide to where her career is going next.

Sometimes I Think About Dying is the film I would point to if someone asked me whether Ridley has grown as an actress since Star Wars, because Fran is the most adult role she has played, and the furthest from Rey. Fran is a young woman who works in an office, who daydreams about her own death, and who meets someone who makes her want to live, and Ridley plays her with a stillness that is almost total: Fran barely speaks, she barely moves, and the audience watches a woman who is disappearing into herself. That is a very hard performance to give, because there is almost nothing to play, and the actor has to make the audience care about a person who does not seem to care about herself. Ridley does it, and the film premiered at Sundance, which is a sign that the people who choose films for festivals took it seriously. I think the film matters because it shows that Ridley is interested in small, difficult stories, not only in large ones, and that she is willing to take a risk on a film that might not find an audience, because the story is worth telling. That willingness is the mark of a serious actress, and it is the reason I am optimistic about her future.

The Instagram decision deserves one more word, because it is easy to treat it as a small thing, and it was not a small thing. She left the platform in 2016, after posting about gun violence and receiving abusive responses, and she has kept a low profile online ever since. At the time, most young actors were building their careers on social media, and leaving it was seen as a risk, because the industry expected actors to be visible. Ridley took the risk, and she has said the platform made her anxious, and that the abuse was not worth the connection it offered. I respect that decision, because it shows a person who knows her own limits, and who is willing to protect herself even when the industry tells her not to. It is the same decision she made when she chose smaller films after Star Wars: a decision to keep the work separate from the noise, and to do the work on her own terms. An actress who can make that decision at twenty-four is an actress who will still be working at forty, because she has learned to survive the parts of fame that destroy other people.

The voice work is the last thing I want to mention, because it is easy to overlook and because it shows a different side of her talent. Cottontail in Peter Rabbit is a small, energetic rabbit, and Ridley’s voice gave the character a warmth that the animation alone could not provide. The Eagle Huntress is a documentary about a Mongolian girl and her eagle, and Ridley’s narration carries the film across mountains and festivals. Voice work is a test, because the audience cannot see the face, and the performance has to live entirely in the timing and the tone. Ridley passed that test, and the fact that she keeps doing voice work, between the films, shows that she is interested in the craft itself, not only in the size of the audience. An actress who will do a voice role in a children’s film, and a narration for a documentary, is an actress who loves the work, and that love is the reason her career is still growing.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why was Daisy Ridley’s Star Wars audition kept so secret?

She auditioned over several months in 2014 without being told exactly which part she was reading for, because Lucasfilm kept the script and character details secret. Thousands of actresses were seen for Rey, and Ridley has said the long, silent process was one of the most stressful experiences of her life.

Yes, Arnold Ridley was her great-uncle. He played Private Godfrey in the BBC comedy Dad’s Army and was also a playwright. He died in 1984, eight years before Daisy was born, so the connection is family history rather than a personal mentorship.

What is Young Woman and the Sea about, and who did Daisy Ridley play?

The 2024 Disney film tells the story of Gertrude Ederle, the American swimmer who in 1926 became the first woman to swim the English Channel, beating the men’s record by almost two hours. Ridley played Ederle and trained extensively for the open-water swimming scenes.

Did Daisy Ridley produce any of her own films?

Yes, she produced Magpie, a 2024 thriller in which she also starred as a mother whose life unravels when her husband casts a young actress in his film. Producing the film meant she helped create the work rather than only accepting offered roles.

What health conditions has Daisy Ridley spoken about publicly?

She has spoken about endometriosis and polycystic ovary syndrome, and in 2024 she revealed a diagnosis of Graves’ disease, an autoimmune condition affecting the thyroid. She has said she discussed them publicly because she wished someone had told her about them earlier.

Will Daisy Ridley return as Rey in a new Star Wars film?

Lucasfilm announced in 2023 at Star Wars Celebration in London that she would return as Rey in a new film directed by Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, set after The Rise of Skywalker. The film remains in development, and Ridley has spoken about it cautiously.