In May, audiences will be introduced again to Anakin Skywalker. But this time, they will meet a kind young boy who is brave, thoughtful, and selfless. A boy with great potential and a destiny as yet undefined.
Episode I tells the beginning of Anakin's story and the young boy who portrays this role faces a challenge no child actor has ever had - the expectations of 20 years and three generations of fans.
"George wrote the script knowing that it would be an incredible task to find the right child actor," says Episode I Casting Director Robin Gurland. "George had every imaginable element written into the role from humor, earnestness, intelligence, and mechanical prowess, to heart-breaking good looks," Robin says.
Robin interviewed over 3000 children from around the English-speaking world looking for a young actor with the right combination of qualities George wanted for Anakin. Robin says, "It is rare to find a child, especially between the ages of 7 and 9, who has the emotional range, intellectual capacity, and physical look that George built into this role."
One central emotional issue for Anakin's character is that he leaves home at a very young age. To show Anakin's vulnerability, George wanted a younger actor than he had originally planned when he set up the back-story for Star Wars: A New Hope. He explained that the emotional drama of a 9-year-old leaving home is far greater than that of a 12-year-old, who is probably more mature and better prepared to face new experiences and adventures alone.
Robin started looking for potential actors for Episode I in July of 1995. When word got out that she was casting for the new Star Wars movie, she became very popular. Robin said it was wonderful to cast this movie because George had no preconceived notions of who he wanted to cast. "He was extremely clear as to what characteristics and emotional elements he wanted for each role, but he didn't equate that with a particular actor." However, George appreciates what actors bring to their parts. "You write a character and you do the best you can to develop it and make it full, but once you put the actor in there, he or she brings just as much as the writer has brought to it," He says. "So it's always a merging of the writer, the director, and actor to create a character."
To begin casting Episode I, Robin started by discussing the script in detail with George to establish the required personality, physical and emotional traits for each character. Next Robin started matching these traits with actors who were appropriate for the parts. She said every actor came to the table equally. "Working on Star Wars gives you this unbelievable sense of freedom knowing that you are not constrained by studio or market or public recognition quotients. You can just cast who is right for each role."
Robin says it was a challenge to build an ensemble of actors that could mesh Episode I with the original trilogy. She compared head shots of actors side-by-side with pictures of Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher and Alec Guiness to choose people who physically resembled the cast of the original trilogy. To help with this process, Robin asked artists in the Skywalker Ranch Art Department to sketch aged versions of the actors she was thinking of for the parts. For example, would an older Ewan McGregor bear any resemblance to Alec Guiness, the original Obi-Wan Kenobi.
When Robin started looking for Anakin, Jake Lloyd was one of the first children she saw for the part. At the time though, he was just five-and-a-half years old -- too young for the role. However, she met with him over the course of casting Episode I and when she was ready to fill the part of Anakin Skywalker, Jake had turned seven-and-a-half and she saw he had reached the emotional and physical maturity necessary for the challenging role.
At this time, they had narrowed the search to three children, one of whom was Jake. He and the other two boys were asked to come out to Skywalker Ranch to meet George. The three boys were screen-tested with Natalie Portman, who had already been cast as Queen Amidala. It was after these tests that Robin saw Jake was ready.
Jake describes the character he plays in Episode I: "He always is getting into trouble, he always is getting into mischief and he's very smart." Jake says the first person he told when he got the part, besides his family, was his best friend David. "That was still when I couldn't tell anybody. You could only tell someone you knew so that if they told anybody, you could get them back good, because you knew some of their secrets." Now that sounds like a boy who understands the power of the dark side...
