Former Child Star ‘Anakin Skywalker’ Jake Lloyd On Why He Quit Acting

Former child star who played the iconic role of Anakin Skywalker in one of the biggest franchises of all time, Star Wars talked about why he quit acting.

Jake Lloyd probably was envied by little kids around his same age when he was eight years old when he got the role of Anakin for the film, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, but he explained that he decided to quite the film industry after his childhood was turned into what he describes as a ‘living hell.’

The now 22-year-old has stayed true to his word. He said:

“Other children were really mean to me. They would make the sound of the light saber every time they saw me. It was totally mad.”

Jake also recalls about how busy his young life became at one point when he was doing about 60 interviews in a day.

“My entire school life was really a living hell and I had to do up to 60 interviews a day.” 

Lloyd felt so a lot of anger towards George Lucas, director of the Star Wars film that he decided to destroy all of his Star Wars memorabilia and decided to reprise his role as Anakin for just five video games.

He decided to take an early retirement from acting as he was no longer able to fit in at school. He said in a magazine:

“I’ve learned to hate it when the cameras are pointed at me.” 

Jake’s mother who is an entertainment agent, admitted in an interview with Scifitv.com that he doesn’t like watching the film anymore and he blames everything on George for that. He said:

“When you have something like that there’s a lot of expectations for it to meet the standards of the public and I don’t think George did that.” For me to go back and watch it now would be kind of creepy.” 

 

When it comes to gossip, I really don’t read things like that, but I like to read sometimes stories like this because I definetely want to hear how a child’s actor life has changed since he gained popularity for a role. Other child actors with their help from their parents they manage to get threw the fame and stay with their feets in the ground.