Jake Lloyd

 What Happened to Jake?

Jake Lloyd, the kid from Episode I. What happened to him? He is one of the leading actors in one of the biggest movies of all time and then he disappeared. Where did he go? 

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(Audio Transcription)

Jake Lloyd was the child of a talent agent, so it's no wonder that he got started in Hollywood at such a young age. Now if his name isn't ringing any bells that's OK. He wasn't on of the most popular child actors in Hollywood, especially when compared to someone like Macaulay Culkin. He was able to snag some big rolls those in some films. The first of which was Jingle All the Way which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger, a workaholic father, and Sinbad, who was also a father and kind of a crazy mailman, but Jake really hit the big time when he starred in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.  Jake of course played the young Anakin Skywalker who was found on the planet Tatooine by Qui-gon Jinn, who was played by Liam Neeson. Anakin quickly falls in love with Queen Amidala, or her street name Padme, who's played by Natalie Portman, ad is then trained by a young Obi-wan Kenobi, who is of course played by Ewan McGregor. It's amazing how many of these stars went on to have great careers after starting in Star Wars. Episode I was of course a huge success at that time and so it is no surprise that a lot of popularity came to Jake Lloyd at that point. George Lucas of course wanted to get the word out. Whether is was getting action figures or video games produced, or getting each Star Wars character on a bag of Doritos, it didn't matter, he wanted to get it done. Jake said that he was doing about 60 interviews a day with different television shows, newspapers, magazines, all in all it was about 60 every single day. Jake says that as an 11 year old he felt very exploited by George Lucas, and still holds a grudge against George. On top of the constant interviews he said he was constantly bullied by other kids. He felt like a real outsider. He did play Anakin Skywalker in one of the highest grossing movies of all time, so of course where ever he went everybody knew him. It was hard to go anywhere, he said, without someone making a lightsaber noise at him. This of course doesn't seem like a big deal, or even an intense type of bullying of any kind, but the problem is everywhere you go, everyone you see is making lightsaber noises. Think about how annoying that is. See, not cool guys, not cool. I know it may be hard to sympathies with this kid because he did make a few million dollars off of just doing one movie, but it did cost him his identity, and most of his childhood. Jake said he won't even watch Star Wars anymore. He did reprise the part of Anakin for a couple video games but after that completely quit acting in film. He's appeared at a few events within the past few years signing autographs and things like that but other than that he really does all he can to stay out of the public eye. We are happy that this child actor's story didn't end in DUI's and drug use like we read so much about in the tabloids today, but it's sad that it did end with such a bitter taste in his mouth for those who helped to get him that career.