Jake Lloyd, the boy who gave life to Anakin Skywalker, in rehabilitation for his mental health problems

Jake Lloyd was only 10 years old when he became part of

He was

when he was only 8 years old, and among the almost 3,000 children who opted for the role, he was the one who won it and in the film

(1999) he gave life to the child Anakin Skywalker, many years before he that sweet and innocent character will end up becoming Darth Vader.

Born in Fort Collins (Colorado) in 1989, his career as an actor never took off despite being part of one of the most profitable sagas in Hollywood, and he disappeared from the public eye.

The last time he appears in the credits of a film dates back to 2001 with

.

Now it has been his mother who has given an interview in which she has told where her son is and how she is.

Last week he turned 35, and he did so in a rehabilitation center: Jake Lloyd has been hospitalized for 10 months to treat his mental health problems.

In a lengthy exclusive interview published with

on Monday, March 11, Lisa Lloyd explains in considerable detail her son's mental health struggles, as well as why she is more hopeful about his recovery today than she has been in recent years.

With the 25th anniversary of the premiere of

approaching (next May), Lisa Lloyd thought it was time to tell how her son's life has been since he appeared in

.

“Jake started having some problems in high school.

He started talking about 'realities'.

He didn't know if he was in this reality or a different reality.

Really, he didn't know exactly what to say to that,” she recalls of the moment she first noticed Jake's personality changing, who, she claims, is aware that she has given this interview.

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That's when she decided to take her teenage son to the doctor, who told her he may have bipolar disorder.

She was prescribed some medications, which she claims never worked.

But time was passing and Jake Lloyd managed to graduate from high school in 2007, and began studying at Columbia College Chicago, but that was when things began to change drastically, and for the worse.

“He missed many classes, and he told me that people followed him,” his mother recalls in the interview.

He also recounts other episodes of his son, such as when he claimed that he saw people with black eyes watching him on the street and that he sometimes engaged in conversations at night through the television screen with Daily Show host Jon

. .

“He did not tell us that he was hearing voices at that time.

But he did it,” Lisa Lloyd also recalls.

In the interview she is also blunt about one thing: the bad reviews that

received did not lead her son to stop acting nor did they contribute to his mental illness.

In fact, she says, she protected him from even being aware of them;

so her mental illness “would have happened anyway.”

Furthermore, she wants to make it clear that the reasons that led her son to stay away from acting were twofold: things at home were not going well (they were in the middle of a divorce process) and he no longer seemed to have fun auditioning.

Jake Lloyd, during Wizard World's Philadelphia Comic Con, in June 2011.Gilbert Carrasquillo (FilmMagic)

After just over a semester at university, he ended up dropping out in March 2008 and went to live with his mother in Indiana.

After several appointments with therapists and psychiatrists, he was finally diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.

“When [the doctors] finally told him, he fell into an even worse depression,” his mother recalls.

Added to this was that Lloyd refused to take medication and go to therapy, because he did not consider that he was sick.

So some complicated episodes continued in the following years, which his mother also dares to share now.

Lisa Lloyd remembers a time, in 2015, when her son was chased by several police cars until he ended up wrecking his own car.

He was traveling alone from Florida to Canada, and after that road chase he ended up arrested and charged with multiple charges in Colleton County (South Carolina).

Then he wouldn't even return his calls when he tried to get him a lawyer, so he spent 10 months in jail.

Lisa refused to give up and continued sending him letters to prison.

When Jake finally called her, she was able to take him to a hospital for treatment, before eventually transporting him to California.

Some time later a new episode occurred: he called her to tell her that he had been shot in her own apartment, and she realized that he was hallucinating.

Jake Lloyd on the red carpet at the premiere of 'Episode I - The Phantom Menace' on May 16, 1999 at Avco Center Cinemas in Westwood, California.Ron Galella, Ltd. (Ron Galella Collection via Getty)

Now Jake Lloyd has been admitted to a mental health rehabilitation center for 10 months, where he is following an 18-month program.

An admission that occurred after in March 2023 she had a strong psychotic break that led him to brake her car on a three-lane road, when she was the co-pilot.

“There was a lot of screaming and yelling,” her mother remembers that day.

But that day, and after the police arrived, Jake was not taken to prison, but rather was admitted to a hospital.

And two months later he was transferred to the center where he is currently.

“He's doing much better than I expected, he's becoming a little more sociable.

“It's like getting more of the old Jake back, because he has always been incredibly sociable until he became schizophrenic,” he says of his evolution.

A tough interview in which she also has a memory for

, and assures that despite what people may believe, his son loves everything that has to do with

.

In fact, for his 35th birthday he gave her a figure of Ahsoka Tano, a character from the

series set in the universe created by George Lucas.