Star Wars Child Actor Jake Lloyd in Mental Health Rehab Facility Following Psychotic Break Last Year, Mom Says

Jake Lloyd, who starred as young Anakin Skywalker in ‘The Phantom Menace,’ has been in rehab for about 10 months

Jake Lloyd, who starred in the Star Wars franchise as a child actor, is now in a mental health rehabilitation facility, according to his mother.

In an exclusive interview published with Scripps News on Monday, Lloyd’s mother, Lisa Lloyd, told the outlet about her now 35-year-old son’s ongoing struggles with mental illness.

She also wanted to share some of the reasons she’s more hopeful today than she’s been in years.
Jake appeared in Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace as a child where he portrayed Anakin Skywalker. In later films, Skywalker would become the fearsome villain Darth Vader.

And with the 25th anniversary of The Phantom Menace release fast approaching, Lisa thought it would be the perfect time to open up about how her son has been doing since his time in Star Wars.
“Jake started having some trouble in high school,” Lisa told Scripps News, recalling the time she first noticed her son’s personality changing. “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 one day, she asked him if he’d completed his homework and he said to her, “I don’t even know if I need to do it. I don’t know which reality I’m in.”

“And I’m like, ‘Well, you’re in my reality today, so you have to do your homework,’” Lisa told the then-teen.
After taking Jake to see a doctor, the medical provider said he could have bipolar disorder, she said.

Although he was prescribed several medications to correct the issues, nothing seemed to work, according to Lisa.

As time went on, Jake graduated from high school in 2007, and had been excited about beginning fall courses at Columbia College Chicago. However, this is where Lisa said things began to drastically change.

“He missed a lot of classes, and he was telling me that people were following him,” she told the outlet.

She said her son would claim to see people with “black eyes” staring at him out in public, and that sometimes, he would engage in late-night conversations with Daily Show host Jon Stewart through his television screen.

He continued seeing doctors until he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

“When they finally told him, it totally threw him off into an even worse depression,” Lisa said during the interview. “It was really hard.”

She talked about how he refused to take his medication because he didn’t think he was sick.

Lisa also recalled a time in 2015 when Jake led deputies on a multi-county chase before wrecking his car. When she tried to get him an attorney, Jake would not answer her calls.

She discussed how painful the situation was, while also describing a time when he called her to say he’d been shot in his apartment. Lisa then realized he was hallucinating.
Lisa said Jake is currently about 10 months into an 18-month stay at a mental health rehabilitation facility after what she calls a full-blown psychotic break in March 2023 when he turned his car off in the middle of a three-lane road and police were called.

“He’s doing much better than I expected,” she said, adding that he’s “becoming a little bit more social.”

And decades later, Jake is still a fan of the franchise.

“He loves all the new Star Wars stuff,” she said. “People think Jake hates Star Wars. He loves it.”