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".
Judy Davis
After making her feature film debut in the 1977 buddy comedy "High Rolling", Davis first came to prominence for her role as Sybylla Melvyn in the coming-of-age saga "My Brilliant Career" (1979), for which she won BAFTA Awards for Best Actress and Best Newcomer. Davis was particularly praised for her performance; Janet Maslin of "The New York Times" admired her for bringing "an unconventional vigor to every scene she's in, even in a film that's as consistently animated as this one," while Luke Buckmaster, writing for "The Guardian" in 2014, opined that Davis gave "a rousing performance as bull-headed protagonist Sybylla Melvyn. The term “once in a lifetime” tends to be slapped around like a bumper sticker, but this meaty role lives up to the accolade." Her breakthrough success continued with lead roles in the Australian New Wave classics "Winter of Our Dreams", as a waif-like heroin addict, the drama "Heatwave", as a radical tenant organizer, and the thriller "Hoodwink", as a sexually-repressed clergyman's wife. Of her performance in "Winter of Our Dreams", Roger Ebert noted, "Davis brought a kind of wiry, feisty intelligence to "My Brilliant Career", playing an Australian farm woman who rather felt she would do things her own way. She's wonderful again this time, in a completely different role as an insecure, distrustful, skinny street waif. [She] performs her movement magnificently."