By Rollo Roth and Daniel Broadway
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Daisy Ridley found that to truly portray Gertrude “Trudy” Edellee, the first woman to swim the English Channel, she would have to overcome one of her fears.
“I'm scared of the open ocean,” Ridley, star of “Young Woman and the Sea,” told Reuters.
While the cast and crew she worked with thought she was joking, it was a real worry for the “Star Wars” actor.
“When I go to the beach, I never go deeper than my waist. I like to see the ocean floor, so I've never swam too far,” she added.
Ridley overcame her fear and eventually got into the water for the film, swimming in the Black Sea for nine days.
She said it was tough keeping up with the pace of the cameras and camera boat, diving in and out of the water, drying off and diving back in again every day.
Although she was able to swim in the ocean for the movie, Ridley doesn't see herself doing so again in the future.
“I'm not really an open-ocean person,” she said.
“Young Woman and the Sea” opens in U.S. theaters on Friday ahead of the Paris 2024 Games, paying tribute to Ederle's Olympic history.
The Disney film charts Ederle's life from a measles-stricken girl to a swimming prodigy who won a gold medal at the 1924 Paris Olympics. In 1926, Ederle was also the first woman to swim 21 miles (32 kilometers) across the English Channel, which separates southern England from northern France.
Following Trudy's Channel swim, her hometown of New York City hosted the city's largest civic celebration in history, with over two million people cheering her on in a parade.
Coach Joachim Ronning has been impressed with Ridley's approach to open water swimming.
“I truly believe she embodies Trudy because she has blue lips, she never complains, she never says anything and she's so strong-willed,” he said.
“Young Woman and the Sea” is another feature film about a female swimmer and will be released after Netflix's 2023 release “Nyad,” which stars both Annette Bening and Jodie Foster and was nominated for an Oscar.
“[Trudy]was so far beyond that movie because she was so far ahead of that movie,” producer Jerry Bruckheimer said. “She led that movie because she was the first woman to accomplish that extraordinary event. You look at all the great female athletes. She was one of the first.”
(Reporting by Rollo Ross and Daniel Broadway; Editing by Mary Milliken and Lincoln Feast)
