Star Wars’ Daisy Ridley set to play a real-life American spy
From the Resistance to the Allies
After bringing trainee Jedi Rey to life in The Force Awakens, British actor Daisy Ridley now has a real-life war heroine to play – American spy Virginia Hall.
According to EW, Ridley is set to star as the Second World War agent in an adaptation of Sonia Purnell’s soon-to-be-published biography A Woman of No Importance. Force Awakens production company Bad Robot is teaming up with Paramount to bring the picture to life, although no directors or screenwriters have yet been announced.
In real life Hall was a gifted linguist with hopes of joining the Foreign Service, but these plans were derailed by an accident that caused her to lose a leg. Barred from US government work, Hall instead went to work for British Intelligence in France following the Nazi invasion, and later joined both the American Office of Strategic Services and its successor the CIA.
The new role marks the latest in a string of castings for Ridley, who has films including Murder on the Orient Express, Chaos Walking, Peter Rabbit and The Lost Wife in the pipeline (as well as Star Wars Episode VIII, of course), and she’ll be a popular choice for many as Hall – particularly the immediate family of biographer Purnell.
Fingers crossed Ridley (who kept her own British accent for The Force Awakens) can master Hall’s tricky Baltimore twang – based on coverage so far, American viewers may be quite picky about that...
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
