Star Wars: The Force Awakens Features This British Actress
This article is more than 2 years old
Though filming for Star Wars: The Force Awakens is in the books, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to get glimpses and peeks behind the curtain now and again. We know the main core of the cast, but in a movie of this size, there are bound to be tons of other roles, filled by tons of other actors, and as we creep ever closer to the December 18 release date, some of these have started to step out of the shadows and into the daylight. For example, we learned recently that three actors from Gareth Evans’ The Raid movies have some as yet undefined role, and now we learned that another British actress has a part in the film.
Yahoo UK came across an email, sent from British television outlet ITV, hyping their show Home Fires. It mentions cast member Leanne Best, and how in 2015 she will be seen in “J.J. Abrams highly anticipated Star Wars VII.” Best recently appeared in The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, where she plays the title character, and can also be seen in the drama Ripper Street.
Star Wars has always been something of a champion of newcomers, or at least relative unknowns. Their turns in A New Hope were huge for Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, and Harrison Ford, and the prequels also went with unfamiliar faces in lead roles. Granted, coming out at this stage in the game, you can’t imagine that Best’s role, if indeed she does truly appear, isn’t going to be an especially big one—we’ve already got the likes of Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Christina Chong, and other generally under the radar actors involved—but what actor doesn’t want to put Star Wars on their resume?
Still, Best can definitely play intense and intimidating, and there’s always room for that in the Star Wars universe. Perhaps she plays some menacing, scary member of the new Empire, or she could also very well play some stern, no-nonsense member of the Republic that rose in the wake of Return of the Jedi. Or it could be something completely different, who the hell knows, it’s all just guesswork at this stage. Still, it’s Star Wars, and that’s always fun to talk about.
We’ve recently heard more about possible female stromtroopers in The Force Awakens, and though it is unconfirmed, the latest word around the water cooler is that a new trailer will show up with Avengers: Age of Ultron on May 1, so we have that to look forward to. It’s possible, perhaps even likely, that this new look will include footage, however brief, of the returning players like Luke, Leia, and Han. We’ll just have to wait and see.
