Daisy Ridley has opened up about her recent Graves disease diagnosis.
The Star Wars actress said she first started experiencing symptoms – including a racing heartbeat, unexplained weight loss, fatigue and tremors – when filming the thriller Magpie.
“I thought, ‘Well, I’ve just played a really stressful role; presumably that’s why I feel poorly,’” she told Women’s Health. Nonetheless, she was referred to an endocrinologist and received the diagnosis last September.
Graves disease is an autoimmune condition occurs when the immune system attacks the thyroid gland and makes it produce too much of the thyroid hormones [per NHS]. These hormones can affect heart rate, body temperature and metabolism.
Ridley’s doctor told her the condition can make you feel “tired but wired”, which resonated with her. “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 mentioned that as well as taking medication, she has also relied on infrared saunas, cryotherapy, massages, acupuncture and baths, as well as a reduced gluten diet. “I am not super strict about it, but generally cutting down on gluten makes me feel better,” she said.
Earlier this year, Ridley spoke about how the stress of Star Wars impacted her health, revealing her anxiety over her role in 2015’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens led to stomach ulcers.
“Essentially, it was a leaky gut,” she told The Times. “I’d never travelled that much, or done press junkets, and my body deals with stress in a very physical way, so my gut was manifesting an emotional reaction to travelling around the world, people saying hello to me in the street. And me going, ‘What’s going on?’ And worrying.”
Listing her worries, she said: “‘Oh shit, should it be me?’ or ‘Am I good enough?’ And I only really felt I was by the third film, The Rise Of Skywalker. By then, I felt, ‘OK, I was chosen for a reason.’ But it took a long time. It was super intense.”
In January, it was revealed that Ridley would reprise the role of Rey for a new Star Wars movie, set several years after the The Rise Of Skywalker. Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight is writing the film, while Pakistani-Canadian filmmaker Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is set to direct.
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