Jake Lloyd, who starred as young Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, has struggled with mental health issues for many years, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia.
He is currently residing in a mental health rehabilitation facility after experiencing a psychotic break last year.
His mother Lisa Lloyd described a long battle managing his conditions, including periods where he refused medication and did not believe he was ill.
“Jake started having some trouble in high school,” Jake’s mother, Lisa Lloyd said. “He started talking about ‘realities.’ He didn’t know if he was in this reality, or a different reality. I didn’t really know exactly what to say to that.”
“And he was like, ‘Well, I don’t even know if I need to do it. I don’t know which reality I’m in,’” Lisa said. “And I’m like, ‘Well, you’re in my reality today, so you have to do your homework.’”
“He missed a lot of classes, and he was telling me that people were following him,” she said.
“He didn’t tell us he was hearing voices at the time. But he was,” Lisa said.
“When they finally told him, it totally threw him off into an even worse depression,” Lisa said of his schizophrenia diagnosis. “It was really hard.”
She added, “He didn’t think he needed to go to the therapist because there’s nothing wrong with him.”
“As a mom, you’re just pulling your hair out because your child needs help,” she said. “You know that he’s sick. You know that he’s not going to get any better unless he gets some medication.”
“He just couldn’t handle it,” Lisa said. “He didn’t know how to process it.”
While the role did not cause his issues according to his mother, years of bullying took a toll.
Lisa remains dedicated to Jake’s recovery and sees signs of improvement during his lengthy rehabilitation program.
“He’s doing much better than I expected,” she said. “He is relating to people better and becoming a little bit more social, which is really nice. It’s kind of like having more of the old Jake back, because he has always been incredibly social until he became schizophrenic.”
She added, “I believe that it was genetic. And his psychiatrist also agrees that Jake was going to become schizophrenic.
“I protected him from the backlash. He was just riding his bike outside, playing with his friends. He didn’t know. He didn’t care,” she said of his life after filming. “Everybody makes such a big deal about that. And it’s rather annoying to me because Jake was a little kid when that came out, and he didn’t really feel all that stuff because I didn’t let him online.”
“People say he quit because of ‘Star Wars.’ Well, that’s not true. It didn’t have anything to do with ‘Star Wars.’ It had more to do with our family. And we were going through a divorce,” she said. “Things were unsettled and kind of rough. And Jake didn’t seem to be having a lot of fun auditioning anymore.”
She hopes he can one day enjoy life again and possibly even return to acting, though his prognosis remains uncertain.
“Jake loved filming ‘Star Wars.’ He had so much fun,” Lisa said. “I would love for him to get well enough to be able to do a little bit of something, and I’m sure he would maybe like to do that. He couldn’t at this point, but you never know how much he’s going to improve. So we’ll see.”
“We’re in a lot better place. And we do have a lot of things to look forward to,” she said. “We all love Jake, and we want to be around him. I just want him to be happy.”
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