Hollywood’s Most Abused Child Star
Best known for his adorable portrayal of Anakin Skywalker
Remember actor Jake Lloyd who played Anakin Skywalker as a child in Star Wars, The Phantom Menace? The release of this movie was a real ordeal for him. The child actor suffered from media pressure and various mockeries at such a young age.
When the movie was released in 1999, Lloyd was only 10 years old. He was previously totally unknown to the public and therefore became famous overnight. But this sudden and immense notoriety did not really benefit him. In his own words, he lived “hell” after the release of The Phantom Menace.
Back to life
The return back to normal life was difficult for Jake Lloyd. Especially at school, where his classmates overwhelmed him with requests for autographs and imitated lightsaber sounds whenever they saw him.
His family was forced to move twice. “Other children were really mean to me,” he confided to the Daily Mail in 2012. “They would make the sound of the lightsaber every time they saw me. It was totally mad. My entire school life was really a living hell — and I had to do up to 60 interviews a day.”
That was not all. Many fans and critics had taken down Lloyd’s performance in the film by saying that he had played poorly.
Faced with media pressure and bullying at school, Lloyd, therefore, definitively stopped his acting career in 2001. He then almost fell back into anonymity, only appearing in a few Star Wars festivals. We hardly heard from him again until June 2015, when he was arrested by police for speeding and driving without a license after a relentless car chase.
Remnants of the past
In April 2016, he was interned in a psychiatric hospital as a paranoid schizophrenic. The hell he went through after the movie’s release in ’99 most probably contributed to his deteriorating sanity. The death of his sister in 2018 also did not help.
Moreover, actor Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in the first and third trilogy, has repeatedly defended Lloyd by reminding people that he was only a child who did what he was told to do. And he criticized the production of The Phantom Menace for failing to protect him.
I’m still angry about the way they treated Jake Lloyd. He was only 10 years old, that boy, and he did exactly what George [Lucas] wanted him to do. Believe me, I understand clunky dialogue.” — Mark Hamill.
Conclusion
Unfortunately, this is what happens quite often to “child stars.” Children and adolescents are not always well-equipped to face the media pressure that comes with stardom. They can be easily overwhelmed by success and attention.
This is perhaps why many child stars have gone wrong afterward by developing psychological disorders, falling into alcoholism and drugs, or having legal problems. It is the case of LIoyd, but it is also that of Lindsey Lohan, Britney Spears, and Macaulay Culkin, for example.