Now that she is rightfully, ridiculously famous, it feels as though Star Wars: The Force Awakens star Daisy Ridley is going to be in pretty much every movie made from here to eternity. That’s not exactly true… but it’s close.
From The Hollywood Reporter comes word that Rey herself will join up with Naomi Watts in Ophelia, a re-imagining of Shakespeare’s Hamlet based on a 2006 young adult novel of the same name by Lisa Klein. Ridley will play Ophelia, the doomed lover of Hamlet, while Watts is slated to play Gertrude, Hamlet’s mother who is also the queen of Denmark. The project, per THR, takes the female perspective of the story through the eyes of Ophelia, the daughter of Polonius, who serves as chief adviser to King Claudius, Hamlet’s uncle who killed his father and married his mother.
Ridley’s name really has been mentioned quite a bit lately, both due to the ongoing filming of Episode VIII, her reunion with J.J. Abrams for a remake of a 2003 Israeli TV movie called Kol Ma, and being considered to play the title role in the reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise, a part that wound up going to another everywhere, all the time actress of the moment, Alicia Vikander.
Playing Ophelia really will give audiences a chance to see Ridley’s chops, even if the movie isn’t a straight adaptation of the Shakespearean tragedy. A couple of actresses who’ve given Ophelia a whirl on screen of late include Kate Winslet in Kenneth Branagh’s 1996 adaptation, and Helena Bonham-Carter in the Mel Gibson-version from 1990. That’s some lofty company. If Ridley is as good and as sympathetic and as emotionally engaging as she was in The Force Awakens, she won’t have much of a problem living up to those high standards.
(Via THR)
