pippa

Philippa Gallagher was a shy girl. She came quietly into the world and she would remain a quiet person throughout her life. She was the only child born to Jeremiah and Jessica Gallagher, an upper middle class couple who hadn't known if they wanted children, but were pleased, nevertheless, when Jessica became pregnant with their one and only daughter. She was an easy child, too easy most people said, and she was the kind of child that was easy to forget. She was a plain girl, a wall flower and many of Jessica's friends actually felt sorry for her, sorry that she and her husband had waited so long to decide to have a child and were saddled, as they put it, with what they saw as a disappointment. While other children her age were considered cute in their antics, Philippa stayed on her own, quiet and reserved. There were times when Jeremiah thought there might be something wrong with their daughter, and convinced Jessica to take her to a child therapist, a therapist who saw nothing exceedingly wrong with a little girl who preferred her immense imagination to the landscape of the real world.

It would be Philippa's therapist who turned the family on to what could be the key to opening the young child up. She liked make believe and stories, and while neither parent was the type to indulge in storytimes with excessive use of different voices, or play time in the supposed fairy ring in the back yard, the therapist gave the Gallaghers plenty of paperwork on playgroups for children just like Philippa. When Jessica gave in and took her daughter to the first class, Philippa felt like she had finally found kindred spirits. They weren't all quiet, but they all understood what it was to imagine. She learned skills in those playgroups that would help her throughout her life, skills that let her cope with the world at large, a world that was big and loud and no safe place for someone who craved small and quiet.

At the age of nine, Philippa was driven from a playgroup to an audition by one of the playgroup leaders. Marcy Smith had convinced the Gallaghers that Philippa wasn't just an imaganitive girl, but a talented one. Because they didn't have to disrupt their lives to take her to the audition, her parents consented and Philippa took her first steps into the world of acting. The audition was terrifying for her. There were too many people, too many things to do and see, too many questions. She was overwhelmed and convinced herself that she turned in a poor audition. When weeks went by without a word, she knew herself to be telling the truth and she stopped wanting to go to playgroup. It wasn't until Marcy showed up on the family's doorstep that they learned Philippa had in fact been cast in a small role in a film called "Mansfield Park." The news was exciting, and still overwhelming, but Philippa went into the situation with her head held high. And she learned a great many things, chief among them was that at nine, she was not ready for the world of acting.

She didn't dislike the world, but she found it to be overwhelming. After "Mansfield Park" was filmed and put to bed, the now ten year old kept her focus on her schooling. She was no brain, but she understood the ins and outs of education better than she understood many things. Learning was another place she could get lost, a place where there was a direct line from point a to point b, a place where she could get as lost in her thoughts as she wanted and no one seemed to care. The one thing that was missing from her education, however, was imagination. She needed to go to that place, for better or for worse, because it was a safe place, a place where she was important and where her perceived failings or short comings were not thown in her face. She had teachers who seemed to understand this and pushed her towards the arts, even though her first experience with them on a larger scale had put her off of the idea of using acting as an escape. But slowly she began to learn to love the simplicity of stage acting and her turns on the school stage pushed her to accept the invitation to audition for a small part in the adaptation of a book she'd actually read, "Girl with a Pearl Earring." The adaptation, to her knowledge, was going to be handled well and the idea of bringing characters from literature she loved to life was something that appealed to her. She auditioned and won the role. The second big screen experience went better than her first, and it made her less timid in terms of going for more and more work on the silver screen.

As Philippa grew older, she grew to hate the Hollywood machine less and less. In essence, she learned to tolerate the world around her in order to continue to earn work in a medium she grew to understand more and more. She would never be one of the outgoing characters on the Hollywood landscape and she would rarely be seen on the cover or in the pages of tabloid magazines. She didn't step out of line, didn't stay at after parties until they building management wanted to close down for the night. She wasn't the kind of girl who drank to excess or tried the latest drug. Her high, she liked to say, was life. She was a girl who grew into a young woman who retained much of her childhood insecurities. The weight of Hollywood still bore down on her in ways that made her prone to anxiety and panic attacks. She continued to work, content to let things come to her as they would, not concerned if she wasn't playing the lead but the lesser female counterpart for most, if not all of her films. She believed that if she was meant to be put in the limelight, that the right script would land on her desk at the right time. And it would have to be the right thing.

The right thing would happen to be the script for something no one would see coming and when they were finally clued into its significance, the casting around the film would be a feeding frezy. And yet something about it spoke to her. It was nights watching the films with her father, the only time she felt like she was truly a part of his world. It was understanding that to be a part of this particular project was to be a part of some kind of history. She also had to realize that signing on, should she get the part, would be the end of her relative anonymity. Up until the moment the script landed in her hands she had been on her own, she had been able to keep to herself. But this was something that would thrust her into the spotlight in ways she wasn't sure she was ready for. But, if she didn't try, she would never know if she would be ready. After a long, involved process, she signed on to play the role of Rey in the seventh installment of the Star Wars franchise. All hell, both good and bad, broke loose.