Daisy Ridley
Ridley began her career with minor roles in the television programmes "Youngers", "Toast of London", "Silent Witness", "Mr Selfridge", and "Casualty". She appeared in the short film "Blue Season", which was entered into the Sci-Fi-London 48-Hour Film Challenge. Ridley played the lead in film three of "Lifesaver", an interactive film which was nominated for a BAFTA Award. She also appeared in the music video for Wiley's song "Lights On", playing the character of Kim. Ridley made her film debut in the 2015 British independent horror film "Scrawl", after her scenes from the British comedy film "The Inbetweeners 2" were removed in the final cut.
In April 2014, Ridley's casting as Rey, one of the lead characters in "", was announced. She was chosen for the film in February 2014. At the time of her casting she was, according to "Rolling Stone", a "total unknown." Her choice by director J. J. Abrams was seen as a repeat of George Lucas's move of casting relatively unknown actors for the lead roles in the first "Star Wars" film in 1977. Ridley began filming her scenes in May 2014 at Pinewood Studios in Buckinghamshire, and prior to the film's release in December 2015, she appeared at the launch of a set of "Star Wars" postage stamps issued by the UK postal service Royal Mail, with her character Rey featuring on a stamp along with the droid BB-8. With international revenues of over $2 billion, "The Force Awakens" was a major box-office hit and the highest-grossing film of 2015. After an early screening of the film, Brian Viner of the "Daily Mail" called Ridley the "real star of the show", adding that her performance as Rey should "send her career into orbit." Her performance received critical acclaim, with Richard Roeper describing her portrayal as "a breakout performance" and adding "Ford has a terrific father figure chemistry [shared] with Ridley and [John] Boyega".
Alison Pill
Pill decided to become an actor when she was 10 years old. As a member of the Toronto Children's Chorus, she was chosen to narrate one of their performances. Her mother tried to discourage Pill by getting her a job as a background performer on the series "". By the time she was 11, she'd played a guest role on an episode of the kids' series "The New Ghostwriter Mysteries". At 12, she landed roles in two TV movies and a mini-series, a guest appearance on the TV series "PSI Factor" and voiced a character on an animated series. After roles in two more television movies, she landed her first feature film role, a small budget Canadian movie called "The Life Before This" in 1999, followed by the role of Jacob's older sister Marfa in "Jacob Two Two Meets the Hooded Fang". Pill played roles in four more TV movies before the age of fourteen. The next year, she landed a small role in "Skipped Parts" in 2000 starring Drew Barrymore and Mischa Barton, then appeared in four more TV movies and features that year, including playing Farrah Fawcett's daughter in the TNT network movie "Baby" and a lead role in the Canadian film "The Dinosaur Hunter", which was originally intended to be shown at a dinosaur museum and on a provincial education channel, but which made its way to the Burbank International Film Festival, winning Pill an award for "Best Child Actress". She landed the role of young Lorna in the ABC-TV biopic "" in 2001, based on the memoir by Garland's daughter, Lorna Luft. That year, Pill also played Sissy Spacek's daughter in the TV flick "Midwives".