‘Star Wars’ Star Reveals Graves’ Disease Diagnosis

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Daisy Ridley said she was diagnosed with Graves’ disease.

The actor shot to fame when she was cast as Rey in the most recent “Star Wars” trilogy, a role that she initially thought was causing her to suffer severe anxiety that was triggering various health issues.

But in September, Ridley discovered that she had Graves’ disease, which affects the immune system and the thyroid and can cause tremors of the hands and feet, weight loss, fatigue, and irregular heartbeat, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Ridley, speaking with Women’s Health, said she began experiencing symptoms after filming Sam Yates’ recent thriller, “Magpie.”

“I thought, ‘Well, I’ve just played a really stressful role,’ presumably that’s why I feel poorly,’” she said.

Ridley saw an endocrinologist who mentioned that Graves’ disease is often described as “tired but weird,” which hit home Ridley.

“It was funny, I was like, ‘Oh, I just thought I was annoyed at the world,’ but turns out everything is functioning so quickly, you can’t chill out,” she said.

The diagnosis prompted Ridley, 32, to adopt a more routine pattern of taking her medication while also adjusting her diet. She had been vegan for several years but also opted to cut out gluten.

“I am not super strict about it, but generally cutting down on gluten makes me feel better,” she said, adding that going gluten-free is said to help with inflammation. After making lifestyle changes, she began to feel healthier.

“I didn’t realize how bad I felt before. Then I looked back and thought, How did I do that?” she said.

This is not the first time Ridley thought that work stress was causing her to struggle with her health. Earlier this year she admitted during an interview with Inverse that, after “The Last Jedi” premiered in 2017, her anxiety was so severe that she developed “holes in her stomach wall,” resulting in her taking a six-month sabbatical before returning to film “The Rise of Skywalker,” marking the trilogy finale.

In 2020, Ridley also spoke about her health during an interview with GQ.

“I saw a picture of me at the London premiere [for ‘The Last Jedi’] and I was so skinny and my skin was terrible,” she said at the time. “My body was just [expletive] up. I got tests done and it turned out my body was taking in no nutrients. I was just like a little skeleton and I was just so tired. I was becoming a ghost.”