Daisy Jazz Isobel Ridley was working in a pub when she was cast as Rey in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, having previously only appeared in a small number of short films and the 2015 horror-thriller Scrawl.
Around her subsequent Star Wars duties for the remains of the sequel trilogy – which she reprises for a yet untitled upcoming Star Wars film – Ridley swapped her lightsaber for assorted big-screen tales of homicide (Kenneth Branagh’s first Poirot outing Murder on the Orient Express, a take on Hamlet from the point of view of Ophelia) and rabbits (voicing Cottontail in the massively successful Peter Rabbit cartoon opposite James Cordon).
She also appeared in Chaos Walking, opposite Tom Holland, The Marsh King’s Daughter, and has done voiceover duties for Twelve Minutes, with James McAvoy and Willem Dafoe, and The Inventor, with Stephen Fry and Marion Cotillard.
Ridley won considerable acclaim for 2023 film Sometimes I Think About Dying, a romcom she also produced, and for Young Woman and the Sea, out earlier this year, in which she plays competitive swimmer Gerturde Ederle, who became the first woman to ever swim across the English Channel, in 1926.
She’s currently starring in Magpie, a contemporary noir thriller scripted by her husband, Tom Bateman, set against the perils of the movie industry.
What would you ask Ridley, who has been frank and courageous speaking about her battles with both sexist fanboys and her own health struggles? Please get your questions in by noon on Tuesday 19 November and we’ll print her answers later that week.
• Magpie is out now on digital platforms
