Jake Broadbent, the actor best known for playing Anakin Skywalker as a child in “Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace,” was arrested after leading South Carolina police on a high-speed chase last week.
Trying to avoid being pulled over, Broadbent, 26, also known as Jake Lloyd, endangered other drivers as he passed cars on a double yellow line and sped up to avoid police Wednesday afternoon, the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department said in a statement.
The Charleston County Sheriff’s Office, the Walterboro Police Department and the Colleton County Sheriff’s Department were all involved in the pursuit.
While speeding southbound on Interstate 95, the driver lost control and “the suspect vehicle ran off the right hand side of the road and drove through a fence and continued driving along a frontage road that ran alongside I-95,” according to the statement.
Broadbent, of Fort Collins, Colorado, continued to drive into a wooded area after the road ended but stopped when he hit several small trees, police said.
Broadbent was charged with failure to stop for a blue light and resisting arrest, police said. He remained at the Colleton County Detention Center on Monday after last week’s hearing, where bail was ordered in the amount of $10,700, Colleton Sheriff’s Sgt. Kyle Strickland confirmed.
Broadbent, whose film credit for “Star Wars” is as “Jake Lloyd,” said in 2012 that the film made his childhood difficult and was the reason he gave up acting.
“Other children were really mean to me,” he said. “They would make the sound of the light saber every time they saw me. It was totally mad. … My entire school life was really a living hell.”
