16. The Role Of Anakin Skywalker Practically Destroyed Jake Lloyd's Life
Imagine the scene. A young, bright-eyed kid gets cast in the first new Star Wars film in almost twenty years. It's the role of a lifetime: not only will it make the kid unbelievably famous, but it's also a sci-fi adventure movie, allowing him to live out his most exciting dreams and imaginative fantasies. The film, of course, was The Phantom Menace, and the kid was Jake Lloyd, portraying the role of a young Anakin Skywalker, who is ultimately saved from the desert planet of Tatooine by Qui-Gon Jinn and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Things, however, didn't turn out so great for little Jake. For a start, his performance was persistently ridiculed by fans and critics. So much so that Lloyd was forced to retire from acting in 2001 after he was repeatedly bullied by his classmates. Another reason for retiring was the immense stress caused by doing up to sixty interviews a day. Things got so bad that in 2012 that Lloyd said in an interview that being in Star Wars ruined not only his acting career, but his entire childhood, and that he had destroyed all of his Star Wars memorabilia out of anger.
Brian Wilson
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Commonly found reading, sitting firmly in a seat at the cinema (bottle of water and a Freddo bar, please) or listening to the Mountain Goats.
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