As we get ready to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Jake Lloyd will be noticeably absent from the coverage, and his mother Lisa recently spoke to Clayton Sandell, for Scripps News, about the young star’s struggles.
The child actor, chosen over 3,000 others to play podracing phenom and Jedi-to-be Anakin Skywalker in the George Lucas space opera, turned 35 last week. Since the movie, Lloyd has been mostly out of the spotlight, his life largely a mystery to his devout fans.
In an exclusive interview with Scripps News, his mother, Lisa Lloyd, provided a glimpse into Jake’s personal saga in the years since appearing in that galaxy far, far away — sharing her son’s turbulent struggle with mental illness, family tragedy and the reasons she’s more hopeful today than she’s been in years.
She also wanted to set the record straight about what her son really thinks about “Star Wars.”
Lisa noted that her son is aware that she is speaking out to tell his story.
“Jake started having some trouble in high school,” Lisa said, recalling the time she first noticed her son’s personality changing. “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.”
One day after school, Lisa asked her son if he’d finished his homework.
“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,’” she said. “And I’m like, ‘Well, you’re in my reality today, so you have to do your homework.’”
Lisa took Jake to a doctor who suggested he might have bipolar disorder. They tried different medications to treat his symptoms, but she says nothing worked. Jake graduated from high school in 2007 and was looking forward to attending classes that fall at Columbia College Chicago.
His brief enrollment at the private arts school didn’t go great.
“He missed a lot of classes, and he was telling me that people were following him,” Lisa said.
She could sense a downward spiral. Jake would sometimes mention seeing people with “black eyes” staring at him on the street, and having late-night conversations with “Daily Show” host Jon Stewart through his TV.
“He didn’t tell us he was hearing voices at the time. But he was,” Lisa remembers.
After a semester and a half, Jake left college in March 2008 to live with Lisa in Indiana. A series of appointments with therapists and psychiatrists eventually led to a diagnosis: paranoid schizophrenia.
“When they finally told him, it totally threw him off into an even worse depression,” Lisa said. “It was really hard.”
The American Psychiatric Association now uses the umbrella term “schizophrenia” to describe the disorder Jake was diagnosed with. It can include delusions, hallucinations, disorganized speech and a lack of motivation that can impact virtually every aspect of a patient’s life. Schizophrenia affects 1 in 300 people, or approximately 24 million worldwide, according to the World Health Organization.
A neurological condition called anosognosia complicated efforts to treat Jake. The condition causes a patient to be unaware of, or unconsciously in denial, about their symptoms.
“He didn’t think he needed to take medication because he wasn’t sick,” Lisa said. “He didn’t think he needed to go to the therapist because there’s nothing wrong with him.”
Lisa said certain medicines eventually lost their effectiveness or Jake would sometimes quit taking his medications entirely, opting to occasionally self-medicate with illicit drugs.
In 2015, Lisa got a phone call from the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department in South Carolina. Jake — on a solo road trip from Florida to Canada — was under arrest and facing multiple charges after deputies said he led them on a multi-county chase before crashing his car.
Lisa hired an attorney to get her son out of lockup, but Jake wasn’t responding.
“I tried to call him and he wouldn’t talk to me. Just flat out refused,” she said. “I was talking to the people at the jail and trying to explain to them that he’s off his medication. But they wouldn’t give him his medication.”
Lisa demanded Jake be sent to a hospital but was told there were no available beds. Jake would end up spending 10 months behind bars.
“As a mom, you’re just pulling your hair out because your child needs help. You know that he’s sick. You know that he’s not going to get any better unless he gets some medication,” Lisa said.
Refusing to give up, Lisa kept mailing notes and cards to Jake while he was in jail. When he finally called, she was able to get him into a hospital for treatment, before eventually moving him to California.
Lisa said it was a struggle getting Jake to keep appointments with doctors and take his medications. He once called in a panic, she said, telling her he’d been shot by an intruder inside his apartment. After a few terrifying moments, Lisa realized her son was actually hallucinating.
Read the interview in full here, and we send Jake our love and hope to see him soon.
