It’s been a long time since anyone’s heard the name Jake Lloyd, and for many that’s a good thing, only because he put in a hideous performance in Episode One as Anakin Skywalker. There were some talented child stars that blew you away with their beyond their years talent, and Lloyd obviously wasn’t one of them.
As Variety reports, Lloyd got busted in South Carolina after leading the police on a high speed chase. The chase lasted for miles, then Lloyd lost control and crashed.
The news was first reported by TMZ (surprise), and Variety reported that Lloyd recently gave an interview where he said he was leaving the film business for good, and being famous from Star Wars screwed up his childhood, making his life a “living hell.”
This story isn’t being written as any kind of gloating, or schadenfreude, after all, this didn’t happen to Jar Jar Binks, and most people are reporting on this because of the Star Wars connection. (Former child stars screwing up apparently still holds a major fascination for many of us as well.) We hope that Lloyd will consider the wreckage of a lot of former child actors before him, and use that as a wake-up call. It worked for Haley Joel Osment, who had an isolated car wreck years back, and is now having a career resurgence in his late twenties.
