Daisy Ridley Says She Struggled To Find Work After Finishing Star Wars

Making the transition from being a complete unknown to playing a major role in a blockbuster franchise doesn’t always lead to a long and successful career as a top-tier Hollywood talent, and it seems especially true when it comes to Star Wars. Mark Hamill never managed to escape the shadow of Luke Skywalker despite enjoying a lengthy second life as one of the industry’s most accomplished voice actors, while Hayden Christensen quickly faded into obscurity once his time in a galaxy far, far away came to an end.

Daisy Ridley will be hoping to avoid a similar fate following The Rise of Skywalker, which catapulted her to worldwide fame and recognition, with The Force Awakens marking just her second-ever movie when it hit theaters five years ago. Ridley has only made two live-action appearances in the interim as the lead of little-seen drama Ophelia and as part of the ensemble in Kenneth Branagh’s box office hit Murder on the Orient Express, but at the age of just 28, there’s still plenty of time for her to build up her filmography.

In a recent interview, however, Ridley admitted that there weren’t a lot of offers coming her way once The Rise of Skywalker had drawn a line under her association with Star Wars, but she refused to panic about the relative lack of opportunities.

“It was so sad to finish Star Wars. 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, 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. Weirdly, at the beginning of the year nothing was coming through. I was like, ‘Aww! No one wants to employ me’. There were actually loads of things that I auditioned for at the beginning of the year and didn’t get any of them.”

Ridley’s next big screen outing sees her star opposite Tom Holland in $100 million sci-fi blockbuster Chaos Walking, which hails from The Bourne Identity and Mr. and Mrs. Smith‘s Doug Liman. That might sound like a big deal on paper, but the YA adaptation originally wrapped nearly three years ago before Liman was replaced for a series of extensive reshoots. Most people are expecting it to bomb when it finally arrives in January, too, meaning Ridley will have to wait a little longer to experience her first post-Star Wars success.