'Star Wars' Actor Jake Lloyd's Mom Breaks Her Silence On His Psychotic Break

'Star Wars'child actor Jake Lloyd, who portrayed young Anakin in 1999's 'Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace', has been in a mental facility for 10 months.

Jake, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2008, had a psychotic break last year and has been in a rehabilitation facility ever since, according to his mother.

The child actor, who was picked to play Jedi-to-be Anakin Skywalker out of 3,000 others, turned 35 last week, during his time in a mental health facility.

Jake's mom, Lisa, is speaking out years after her son traveled to a galaxy far, far away, revealing when his life began to spiral out of control.

“Jake started having some trouble in high school,” she told Scripps. “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.”

After school one day, she asked Jake if he’d finished his homework, “And he was like, ‘Well, I don't even know if I need to do it. I don’t know which reality I’m in,’” she said. “And I'm like, ‘Well, you're in my reality today, so you have to do your homework.’”

Following the incident, his mom took Jake to a doctor, who suggested he may have bipolar disorder. In an attempt to get his emotions and symptoms regulated, he was prescribed several medications, but she says nothing worked.

Jake went on to graduate from high school in 2007, and was looking forward to attending classes that fall at Columbia College Chicago, but it didn't go well.

“He missed a lot of classes, and he was telling me that people were following him,” Lisa said of that time. The child star was also reportedly hearing voices at that time.

He continued to see doctors and specialists, where he was eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.  “When they finally told him, it totally threw him off into an even worse depression,” Lisa said. “It was really hard.”

Over the years, he suffered from self-medication and legal trouble, even getting arrested.

“He didn't think he needed to take medication because he wasn’t sick,” Lisa said. “He didn't think he needed to go to the therapist because there's nothing wrong with him," which resulted in him taking illicit drugs as a way to cope.

But, it wasn't until March 2023 that he had a complete mental break. According to his mom, the incident happened as she was driving him home after picking up food at McDonald’s. “He said he wanted to turn the car off. And he turned the car off in the middle of the three lanes, and we were in the middle lane,” Lisa recalled. “There was a lot of yelling and screaming.”

The entire situation led to a traffic jam, where 911 was notified. “The police got there, and they asked Jake some questions,” Lisa said. “He was talking to them, but none of it made sense. It was all word salad.”

However, this time around, Jake avoided jail, and instead, was admitted to a hospital and was later transferred to an inpatient program at a mental health rehabilitation facility.

He has been there for approximately 10 months and is expected to stay for another eight.

“He’s doing much better than I expected,” Lisa said. “He is relating to people better and becoming a little bit more social, which is really nice. It's kind of like having more of the old Jake back, because he has always been incredibly social until he became schizophrenic.”

Thanks to his improvement, he was granted permission to leave the facility on his birthday, where he went to see 'Wonka' in theaters with his mom.

“He really loved it,” Lisa said. “That was one of the things that we couldn’t do when he was off his medication was watch movies. He just didn’t have the attention span for it.”