‘Star Wars’ Star Daisy Ridley Got Advice From Carrie Fisher: ‘It’s Hard To Date’
Daisy Ridley makes her blockbuster debut this week in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. While it isn’t the English actor’s first role, it is, by far, her most prominent. She stars in the seventh film of the legendary franchise, which is expected to break box office records over the holiday season.
As The Daily Mail reported, Ridley has gotten some advice from a very knowledgeable source in the Star Wars universe: Carrie Fisher. Like Ridley, Fisher was largely unknown when she was tapped to star as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars film in 1977. It’s a role with which she became synonymous, and it made her a pin-up star in the 1970s and 1980s.
In an interview with The Sunday Times, Ridley spoke highly of Fisher, who imparted her wisdom after being a Star Wars icon for almost 40 years.
“[Carrie is] brilliant. Amazing. One of the smartest, funniest women I’ve ever met.
“[She told me] it’s hard to date once you’re a big Star Wars star, because you don’t want to give people the ability to say, ‘I had sex with Princess Leia.'”
This is not the only piece of advice Fisher gave Ridley. As Inquisitr previously reported, the women participated in an Interview article and Carrie instructed the younger actor to take care with her image, encouraging her to turn down the “slave outfit,” an iconic part of Princess Leia imagery.
Of the many trailers released to promote Star Wars: The Force Awakens, one of the most enticing implies a family relationship between Ridley’s character, Rey, and Han Solo, played by Harrison Ford. Ridley, like all members of the cast sworn to plot secrecy, would not say whether Rey is the daughter of Solo and Fisher’s Leia.
Fisher and Ridley share a family legacy of the performing arts. Ridley’s great-uncle starred on a popular English television show, as she revealed in an Entertainment Weekly interview. Fisher is the daughter of screen legend Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher.
Ridley attended a performing arts high school in London, but only because, as she told EW, “I was very naughty,” and her mother thought keeping Daisy occupied would improve her behavior. She eventually got into acting with the help of a teacher. The Times reported that she was recently a bartender at the Union Tavern in west London, where she grew up.
She told EW that she and fellow Londoner John Boyega, who plays Finn in The Force Awakens, are in fact from different places — despite a common city.
“[S]omebody did ask me if me and John got on because we’re from the same place. We’re not from the same place. [Laughs.] He’s from South London, I’m from West.
“It’s completely different.”
Ridley and her four siblings went back and watched the Star Wars franchise after Ridley got the role of Rey. She said viewing the original movie was a strange experience, since the film’s three main stars — Fisher, Ford, and Mark Hamill — came back for The Force Awakens.
“It was weird, in hindsight, going back to watching the film after having seen it, and then having worked with them, and then going to watch it again, it was a weird thing.”
Altough there are some late-night screenings on Thursday, December, 17, Star Wars: The Force Awakens opens in wide release on Friday, December 18, 2015.
[Main photo by Yuriko Nakao/Getty Images Entertainment]
