Background and career
Jake Matthew Lloyd (born March 5, 1989) is an American former actor who portrayed young Anakin Skywalker in the film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999) and Jamie Langston in Jingle All the Way (1996).
Jake Matthew Lloyd was born in Fort Collins, Colorado, on March 5, 1989 to Josh Broadbent and his wife, Lisa (née Flowers). Lloyd attended Carmel High School in Carmel, Indiana, where he graduated in 2007.
Lloyd began his acting career in 1996, playing Jimmy Sweet in four episodes of ER. He was then cast as Jake Warren in Unhook the Stars. He got his big break playing Jamie Langston in Jingle All the Way. He also played Mark Armstrong in Apollo 11. Lloyd gained worldwide fame when he was chosen by George Lucas to play the young Anakin Skywalker in the 1999 film Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, the first film in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. 3,000 other candidates auditioned for the role and the process of finding an actor to play the role took up to two years. Lucas selected other children who had auditioned to attend a screen test at Skywalker Ranch in March 1997. Producer Rick McCallum said, "Jake has a very interesting personality. He's smart, mischievous and loves anything mechanical. He had all the right qualities that George was looking for."
Prior to his audition, Lloyd was already an enthusiast of Star Wars and wore a Darth Vader costume one Halloween. He auditioned twice and waited two years before being cast as Anakin. Lloyd's age was closer to the age of his character when filming began. Initially, Anakin was ten years old but after a change in the script his age was lowered to nine. Lloyd established several similarities between himself and his character saying, "I love doing mechanics; he is one mechanical kid. I like to build stuff." Like with some of the cast, he was impressed by the production including the props and costumes. Lloyd said, "It was just fantastic. I was blown away the first day."
Lloyd attended the first Star Wars Celebration in Denver, Colorado which celebrated the upcoming release of The Phantom Menace. The film was released to cinemas in May 1999. Initially reviews were mixed; however the film became the highest-grossing film of 1999 and the highest-grossing Star Wars film at the time of its release. One of his co-stars, Anthony Daniels said in his 2019 memoirs that Lloyd "was amazingly mature and self-confident" and "delighted the fans with his happy banter" during the Celebration. Lloyd received the Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a Feature Film. Like with a lot of the cast and crew, Lloyd defended Ahmed Best praising him for his humour and saying, "He is one of the coolest guys that I've ever met." Both actors faced criticism over their performances. Lloyd appeared in the 2001 documentary, The Beginning: Making Star Wars Episode I, which was one of the bonus features of The Phantom Menace DVD release. The documentary chronicles the production of the film and includes footage of Lloyd's audition as well as the other potential Anakins with Natalie Portman prior to getting the part. Due to Star Wars: Episode II: Attack of the Clones being set 10 years after The Phantom Menace, Lloyd did not reprise his role. Hayden Christensen portrayed Anakin as an adult in the following films rounding up the prequel trilogy. Christensen admitted to Star Wars Insider in 2005, that he found it difficult bridging the gap between Jake Lloyd's Anakin as an innocent boy and the villain Vader was introduced as in the original trilogy. Following a reappraisal of the prequel trilogy, in 2023, Christensen said that by going back to the character as a child destined to achieve great things in The Phantom Menace, "George Lucas subverted our expectations and understanding of this character" and made it a good starting point for Anakin's character development throughout the trilogy. Archival footage of Lloyd as Anakin can be seen in the recap at the beginning of the 2022 mini-series, Obi-Wan Kenobi. In 2000, Lloyd filmed the dramas Die with Me and Madison, then retired from acting, although Madison was not released in cinemas until 2005.
After retiring from acting in 2001, Lloyd continued to make appearances at sci-fi and comic-book festivals. In 2012, he announced that he would be directing a documentary highlighting Tibetan refugees in India. Lloyd was commissioned in 2012 to create a promotional video for singer Mallory Low. Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones actor Daniel Logan, who played the young Boba Fett in the film, starred in the video. Lloyd left Hollywood for Chicago, and dropped out after a semester at Columbia College Chicago, where he studied film and psychology.
