Star Wars' Jake Lloyd Receiving Treatment After 'Full-Blown Psychotic Break,' Mom Updates On His Health
Jake Lloyd, the child actor who famously brought a young Darth Vader to life in Star Wars Episode I – The Phantom Menace, is recovering after suffering what his mother described as “a full-blown psychotic break.”
It’s been 25 years since Jake played Anakin Skywalker in the 1999 Star Wars movie. He was replaced by Hayden Christensen after the character aged up between the first and second movies.
In the years since landing the breakout role, Jake has largely stayed out of the spotlight and left acting behind.
In a recent interview, his mom Lisa opened up about how he was doing, his relationship with Star Wars and his personal struggles.
Read more about Jake Lloyd…
Lisa told Scripps News that he is “doing much better than [she] expected” as he receives treatment at an inpatient mental health rehabilitation center. He’s been in the treatment center for about 10 months and has eight to go.
She explained that her son has privately dealt with mental health struggles for years.
“Jake started having some trouble in high school,” Lisa recalled. “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.”
She added that he was “hearing voices,” which he didn’t tell them at the time. However, he did tell her that “people were following him” when he went to college after graduation.
After he left school, doctors diagnosed him with paranoid schizophrenia, which “threw him off into an even worse depression.” Jake was also diagnosed with anosognosia, which is a neurological condition where patients do not believe that they are sick and thus don’t think they need to take medicine.
Jake was arrested in 2015 after a high speed car chase, and he spent 10 months in jail before he could be moved to a hospital to receive treatment.
After moving to California, he suffered another tragedy when his younger sister passed away in 2018.
In March 2023, he was admitted to a hospital after stopping his car in the middle of traffic. He’s been receiving treatment ever since and thankfully seems to be doing better.
“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 said.
Lisa stressed that the negative reception to Star Wars did not cause Jake‘s mental health struggles. She said that she and doctors believe that it is due to a family history.
In regards to the backlash to the movies, she said that he wasn’t aware of most of it.
“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 explained. “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.”
While he faced some bullying in high school, it did not sour his love of Star Wars.
She wasn’t sure what was next for Jake but stressed how grateful everyone was to be “in a lot better place.”
“We do have a lot of things to look forward to,” she told the outlet. “We all love Jake, and we want to be around him. I just want him to be happy.”
We wish Jake well and hope that he continues to recover!
If you missed it, we recently rounded up 13 actors who were in the running to play Anakin after Jake. The list included a popular Oscar winner who turned it down. Hayden also revealed why he thought he never had a chance to book the part.