Star Wars actress Daisy Ridley has said Carrie Fisher warned her that dating would be tough after she joined the sci-fi franchise. Ridley, 25, worked with the late actress on 2015 film The Force Awakens. She told Vogue that Fisher said the romance was hard as a Star Wars star “because you don’t want to give people the ability to say ‘I had sex with Princess Leia’.” She also said of Star Wars veteran Fisher, who died in 2016: “I’d never met anyone openly bipolar before, who discussed loving glitter because of her LSD days.”
Ridley got her big break when she was cast as Rey in the Star Wars sequel trilogy. She said the praise for her performance made her worry that she would not be able to repeat it in the second film in the series, The Last Jedi. She also struggled to cope with the impact of fame and ended up turning to therapy. Ridley said: “Everything was so confusing. “People were recognizing me – I still don’t know how to handle it. “My skin got really bad because I was stressed. It was crippling. I just felt so seen and so self-conscious.”
The star said at one point some fans even turned up at the door of her apartment and knocked to ask for autographs. “I literally went, ‘No fuckin’ way’,” she said, adding that her mother told her: “Everyone’s trying to take ownership of you.” The actress said even now she still calls her mother once a month “in hysterical tears, going, ‘I’m not equipped to deal with this!’” Ridley then “went and saw a lovely lady” who helped her to adjust to her new life. “I felt like I was sort of reducing myself because I was so worried that people would recognize me,” she said, before deciding: “You know what? I want to dance through life. “I don’t want to scuttle.”