©Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Cleaner : Set in present-day London, a group of radical activists take over an energy company’s annual gala, seizing 300 hostages in order to expose the corruption of the hosts. Their just cause is hijacked by an extremist within their ranks, who is ready to murder everyone in the building to send his anarchic message to the world. It falls to an ex-soldier turned window cleaner, played by Daisy Ridley, suspended 50 stories up on the outside of the building, to save those trapped inside, including her younger brother.
Director : Martin Campbell, Sébastien Raybaud
Producer :Michael Kuhn, Gavin Glendinning
Screenwriter : Simon Uttley
Distributor : Quiver Distribution
Production Co : Anton, Qwerty Films
Rating : R (Brief Drug Use|Violence|Language Throughout)
Genre : Action, Mystery & Thriller, Drama
Original Language : English
Release Date (Theaters) : Feb 21, 2025, Limited
Runtime : 1h 36m
©Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Q&A with Actress Daisy Ridley
Q: What movie do you think you’ve seen the most?
Daisy Ridley: Maybe something like “Love Actually” but also it’s probably an animated movie. Oh God, “Love Actually.” Yeah.
Q: Before getting cast in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” you worked in two pubs in London. What were the pubs’ names, if you remember, and what’s your strongest memory of that time being a bartender? I don’t know what you did.
Daisy Ridley: I was a bartender, yeah. The two pubs are quite near my mom’s house, so I’m not going to shout them out right now. The very strange situation I had there was a guy that used to come into the first pub I worked in. I hadn’t seen him in years and years and years and I was in Paris doing press for “Sometimes I Think About Dying.” We were not in the center of Paris and I was having breakfast.
I was looking at this guy thinking, “I really recognize this guy. Is he an actor?” He was the guy from the pub and he came over. He was so sweet and, weirdly, he did a book about David Bowie, which was also very strange. We had this strange reconnection somewhere in Paris after I hadn’t seen him since I literally served him a glass of wine at the pub years before.
Q: That’s crazy. How many times have you watched “The Force Awakens”?
Daisy Ridley: [Cackling] I Imagine like 50. I’ve watched it maybe three times around the time it came out and then weirdly it was on in the gym when I was working out, so I saw a bit of it, recently.
©Courtesy of Disney
Q: Can you watch yourself on screen or are you one of these people that goes to the premiere, says hi, and then immediately disappears?
Daisy Ridley: I feel like I’ve been able to separate watching myself from the film as a whole. I want to see the film as a whole. It’s never really comfortable, but certainly when it came on recently I was like… “Oh.” It really felt very sweet to watch a very young me on the screen.
Q: If you’re feeling down, what is the movie or TV show you go to?
Daisy Ridley: “Friends” probably.
Q: What is your go-to fast food choice?
Daisy Ridley: Oh, a burger from a place called Honest Burgers, they do a banging burger!
Q: What’s a project that you wish more people had seen?
Daisy Ridley: That’s interesting, Probably “Magpie” — not many of you have seen it because it is very personal and close to my heart. I love the movie.
Q: If anyone has not seen “Magpie” by Daisy it’s really good and people here can verify that. What’s a stunt you wish you didn’t do?
Daisy Ridley: There’s a bit in this, not that I wish I didn’t do it. but when I dropped from the ceiling, I suddenly became spider-woman and put the bag over the guy’s head. The way I was being maneuvered, I had to be wrenched so hard and smacked into the thing that I think I pulled something out of my shoulder. We had to do that quite a few times, so it wasn’t that I wished I didn’t do it, but it was one of those ones that lasted a while, with the pain.
Q: Would you say that that was the toughest stunt of your career?
Daisy Ridley: No, what would I say was the toughest? That one is tricky though because the choreography of it was basically that I was up there and there were two guys holding me in the corner on a rope. It wasn’t a pulley system exactly. Often that’s how you measure everything, but when it’s people, there’s a margin of error.
I was free gliding in the harness, so someone had to hold my toes, then they had to run away and would go, “three two one action.” My heart was pounding. I know I’d have to land in the right place, put the bag over the head, do the wrench and get it all right. So in terms of choreography and making sure it was camera ready, it took like 15 tries or something. It was intense.
Q: Speaking of takes, what’s the most takes you’ve ever done for a project and why?
Daisy Ridley: Martin [Campbell, the director] is a many taker and is really so specific about everything. I would say that we probably did more takes with him than I have done before. He’s just very specific.
Q: Do you still have someone on your bucket list that you were begging your agents to get in that movie or TV show?
Daisy Ridley: Yeah, there’s loads.
Q: Is there someone on the top of the list?
Daisy Ridley: At the top of the list? Greta Gerwig is up there. I was like, “Oh, the Oscar’s going to Saoirse Ronan and I’m such a huge fan. Of course, she’s going to be absolutely amazing but yes, I asked. I’m shameless.
Q: You should absolutely put it out there if you want to do something.
Daisy Ridley: Yeah, I just feel like she’s so brilliant with actors and the fact that actors keep working with her again is such a testament to her. I love her movies.
Q: If you had the opportunity to talk to someone who’s no longer with us, an actor or a director, who would you love to have had a conversation with?
Daisy Ridley: Interesting. Maybe Audrey Hepburn. Yeah, I just feel it would be interesting to know what it was like being Audrey Hepburn, just generally.
Q: Absolutely. Have you ever picked a project based on where it’s shooting?
Daisy Ridley: [chuckles] No, but when a nice location comes up, oh, it’s lovely. But no.
Q: I read that you were a big Harry Potter fan when you were growing up. What house do you think you’d be put in?
Daisy Ridley: I was either Gryffindor or Ravenclaw.
Q: There’s a huge Harry Potter series being made. They are going to be like seven or eight seasons. Have you asked anyone to be a part of it?
Daisy Ridley: I haven’t asked because honestly those performances are so phenomenal that I feel it would be so terrifying to take on one of those roles.
Q: Also a huge commitment of time.
Daisy Ridley: I really loved the films. I love the performances and am really looking forward to seeing what they do with them. They will clearly be so different, but, my god, the pressure would be so high.
Q: Do you have a strategy for social media or do you wing it every day?
Daisy Ridley: I wing it. My algorithm tends to be sweet videos of babies when their parents come home and they’re happy. [laughs] I don’t know why. So it tends to be a winging-it situation and watching sweet videos.
Q: You’ve been to three Star Wars movies, how would you rank them?
Daisy Ridley: It’s like in “Sophie’s Choice,” I abstain.
©Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Q: It’s fascinating how actors like to get ready for a role. Let’s talk about “Cleaner.” Say you’re a building cleaner on September 1st. What were you doing the month leading up to filming in terms of what’s your nine-to-five Monday through Friday? Are you in training? Were you looking at the script? How were you thinking about your performance so that you were comfortable when you sat down on set that first day?
Daisy Ridley: For this, I had about six weeks of physical training, so my nine to five I would go and do a general workout and then I would do fine training for three hours and then, it really depended on the day, some gun training, some wire work and that was pretty consistently four or five days a week for that time.
Q: Is it like a nine-to-five or is it like you’re going in 10, and you’re done in two?
Daisy Ridley: It’s fairly short. You’d be so physically just burnt out before you start filming, working at that intensity. It would probably be realistically in the room doing stunt work for four hours on and off. I would often be speaking to Martin. I remember doing a chemistry read with Matt who plays my brother. We’d be talking through stuff, talking to the writer, getting to the grips with various bits and bobs. So that was happening in the six weeks before filming and then thinking a lot about how it might go.
Q: How much are you looking at the script and thinking about dialogue? When are you starting to break that stuff down so it starts to become muscle memory or how much are you sort of like, “Well what am I doing in the first week?”
Daisy Ridley: With this, because so much of it was when I was alone, it was quite overwhelming to think about how many scenes I had alone and the different head spaces I was in for each. I took more chunks of time in how we were filming it and then physically I knew I’d be working up to stuff I knew when the fight would be. I obviously had read the script and studied and all that sort of stuff, but then it was week by week, so on Sunday I’d be looking through everything that’s coming the following week and then, each night really preparing for the next day.
©Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Q: How much did Martin want to block-shoot or film certain things in order?
Daisy Ridley: He was wonderful in that we filmed chronologically, but we obviously did do things in certain sequences. When I’m in the cradle we would do those sequences in order so when it was tilted in various sections of the film, we would work chronologically. We would never start at the last scene first, but sometimes we’d go from scene 10 to scene 30 to scene 100.
Q: Jumping backwards to sort of a Hollywood thing, what was the stuff that you’ve learned as an actor over the last decade that you wish someone had told you earlier in your career about the industry or about acting on sets of big movies?
Daisy Ridley: I don’t know that I feel I know anything now that I didn’t know then. I feel like we all as actors have a responsibility to know our lines, know what we’re doing and turn up prepared and ready to go — and be nice. I feel like we’re all just trying to be the best people on set and, I suppose, try and be as present as possible. But again, I always knew that, but really you just never know what’s going to happen. You never know how the scene’s going to go. You can prepare and prepare and prepare for A and then B or C would happen. Maybe it’s being okay with things not going how you thought they might go.
Q: You’re number one on the call shoot on this movie. What kind of added responsibility do you feel when you are the leader of a movie and on a poster? You’ve seen other people where you’ve watched them even go on the call sheet. What did you learn when you were watching them that you were like, “I need to do this when I’m that person?”
Daisy Ridley: It’s probably the previous answer I feel like we are all, the fact of it is of course we’re making films and we’ve want the films to be excellent, but you also are spending so much time with the people on set and everyone is working so hard, so all one can do in any sort of position of number one or whatever it is, is set an example to everyone else that you would hope that other people would do. Being on time, knowing what you’re doing, knowing your lines, just generally making other people’s days not difficult.
©Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Q: What have the last few years been like for you? You’ve done such different roles from “The Marsh King’s Daughter”, “Magpie,” “Young Woman and The Sea”, “Sometimes They Think About Dying,” “Cleaner” and “We Bury The Dead” which is coming out soon, What’s it been like for you? A lot of times certain actors are pigeonholed. They’re doing the same thing again and again and these are such different roles.
Daisy Ridley: I feel really genuinely blessed that I have not been pigeonholed. It’s weird that the way I feel about the work I’ve been doing. On the plane over here, I watched “Smile 2” then “Paddington in Peru” and then “Practical Magic”. I love such different films for various different reasons. I love different sorts of actors and directors. Getting to do my version of that, to work with different people in different genres as different roles is so wonderful. The last few years have felt really great.
I feel that each project has had its challenges to overcome, whether it be emotional or physical or stamina wise. It’s good for young women to see how I am going to do this. How am I going to do this when I’m exhausted? All of that has been a really wonderful learning process and I get to work with really great people.
Q: For people who haven’t seen “Young Woman and The Sea,” it is really worth your time. It’s streaming on Disney Plus in case you haven’t seen it. It’s really good. So, quick question, if your character in “Cleaner” were to fight Hans Gruber, [the villain played by Alan Rickman] in “Die Hard”, what would be the result?
Daisy Ridley: I feel like eventually she’d win, but it would be a cat and mouse game, much like it was in “Die Hard”, he’s a wily fellow.
Q: Hans Gruber — thanks to Alan Rickman’s performance — might be, if not the best antagonist in film, he’s one of the beest villains in movie history.
Daisy Ridley:Then I watched “Robin Hood.” He’s an excellent baddie in that as well, .
Q: He’s amazing in that.
Daisy Ridley: Yeah, amazing. And then lest we forget Severus Snape…
Q: Or “Galaxy Quest.”
Daisy Ridley: He’s just done so much, honestly I love rewatching him.
Q: You were offered a lot of scripts, you read a lot, but what was it about this one that said, “Oh, I want to do this?”
Daisy Ridley: Honestly, the first thing I saw was Martin Campbell. He’s like a legend. Then I read it and found the story to be very propulsive. Of course, I assumed that the goodies would win, but I couldn’t figure out how it was going to come together. I really was excited to do a British action movie and, at the heart of it, I wanted to explore this relationship with Joey and her brother, which I felt was so relatable.
I feel like the relationship is very understandable to a lot of people. She’s trying to do the best she can. They’ve had a really tricky time and she messes up a lot, but she is trying to atone for that. I really think that’s what makes Martin’s film so special. Of course, the action’s amazing and spectacular, but he always has his real beating heart at the center of his movies. [They’re] always with a lot of joy and laughter too — sometimes in very unexpected places.
©Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Q: Your character is not like Jason Bourne, you can be beaten.
Daisy Ridley: If she’s been beaten the shit out of, she has to look like she’s been beaten the shit out of. As time goes on, she’s so tired and messed up so it adds up to that feeling of “this poor woman, what a day.” Yeah, she can be beaten.
Q: You mentioned the makeup and the way your character looks. How tempting was it when you are made up like that and you’re just beat up, to leave the set and go to the supermarket just to get people’s reaction to you?
Daisy Ridley: It was funny because I remember when we were doing “The Marsh King’s Daughter,” there was a bit where I was quite bloodied and would send pictures to my friends. On this one I was sending pictures again. Everyone’s like, “Are you okay? Why are you always beaten up in the things you do?”
The makeup for this was so phenomenal. It was one of those strange things. Tamsin, who also designed “Magpie,” designed this and Charlie did my makeup. There would be moments where I would forget because of course it just feels like your face and then go to the bathroom and be like, “Oh my God, there’s this insane black eye that she had built.” Yeah, scary though.
Q: And Clive Owen is in the movie.
Daisy Ridley: It’s funny because when they said he was in it, I was like, “Oh my God, amazing… reunited.” Then we did not share a scene, but I did say hello to him and it was very joyful. Watching Clive come on set is really amazing — he has such a presence and magnetism. I was there when he came on to do something and I thought, “What a guy, what an actor.”
Q: Part of this movie was filmed in Malta. Were you in Malta for this?
Daisy Ridley: Honestly, it was basically a holiday for me. It was really nice. Everyone else was working. I had, was I even on? Yes, I was. It was the very final moment when my face wasn’t even on camera. It was really nice. They actually did some of the interiors in Malta. they did inside the police HQ and then just that gorgeous trackback shot at the very end.
They were also shooting “Gladiator II” at the time there. So (director) Martin snuck over to the set to see what he could see, but it was unreal. We drove down the road. It’s funny because when I was watching “Gladiator II” I was like, “Oh, we drove past that set” because you could obviously see everywhere that they were filming.
Q: One of the things though with the villain, is that the antagonist makes a lot of really good points, but just goes one step too far.
Daisy Ridley: I think the terrifying thing about real baddies is they are so clear in their beliefs. The baddy in this one, the root of what he’s saying is that he wants the world to be better. He wants people to stop screwing things up, which of course we can all relate to. But yes, the way he goes about it and ultimately the end goal for him is so extreme that he has no qualms with putting everyone in danger. That is really what’s terrifying.
©Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Q: What was it like filming the action scenes on set, especially since this isn’t a Marvel movie, You don’t have 200 days to make this. Talk about that sequence where you’re burning the woman’s face. Take us through filming that sequence and what it actually entails, was that one day, five days, or what?
Daisy Ridley: The fights together, the two fights I have, I’m going to say took six or seven days to film all of them. Also, in that time you’re trying really hard not to get injured. My costumer on it, Katie, got one of those, we associate them with a grandma. Those things you can put in the microwave and they smell like lavender and put them around your neck. That honestly kept me going because in between fighting I couldn’t cool down too much because of course you have to stay warmed up. Shout out to those nana necklace things.
Typically, it depended. The first fight I had with the woman because it was such an enclosed space that was more, we were really trying to figure out how we could capture that because even the camera being where we were was soaked. It was such a small area, but oh no, actually even coming through the door, all of it took, it’s weird. It takes both longer and less time than you think it’s going to take. You feel like, oh surely we can do this in one day and then of course there’s a hundred other things to do, but I’m going to round up to two weeks for all of the action.
Q: Were you filming all these action scenes in a two-week span? What is that like? Every night going home?
Daisy Ridley: I have the wrench. I literally pulled my arm back so hard and in the slightly wrong direction that the whole set rattled. All the lights rattled and I thought I broke my bone. It was so painful. Of course you’re already tired because you’ve shot a whole movie. It was really about trying to limit how injured I was. It was super intense and the wire work, me being spider-woman, all of that all happened in that time.
Q: What is it actually like? Was there someone on set who specifically is telling you in these two weeks what you should eat or you should take B12 or where you’re on your own and you’ve got to get through this?
Daisy Ridley: I actually took it upon myself to do a meal thing, the whole shoot, because I knew I needed to be supported in a particular way. I was making sure I was doing that, which I’m sure it would have been done otherwise, but it was something that I knew going in and I really needed to maintain that particularly for that. Then obviously you just eat so much, so tired and going so consistently.
We had really good craft [services] and we had one amazing barista. That coffee was so good. We actually got into the habit of, at 3 or 3:30p, where we would get a hot chocolate and it was so lovely. It became a ritualized moment of togetherness and you knew where you were in the day. The thing about doing stunts is, time becomes a vortex. You don’t know where you are or how much you’ve done so it was a nice way to break up the day with that hot chocolate.
Q: Towards the end of the film, you and your brother were talking about the Marvel movies. Do you have a favorite?
Daisy Ridley: You know what I’m going to say? Although, does it fall under Marvel? “Spider-man: Into the Spider-Verse”.
©Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Q: You recently signed on to another movie with Martin Campbell. Can you tell people about it? Are you filming it this year?
Daisy Ridley: We should be. I play in fact someone from the military but an American military thing and I’m like, wow, does this sound just like “Cleaner” but it’s not, and she has to save the day. Oh my god, she’s just a hero.
Q: There’s not enough female lead protagonists. Men get this movie with male stars a lot so it’s just nice when it is a woman kicking ass.
Daisy Ridley: I’m so specific about what I like script-wise. He’s so wonderful and took me out to dinner and had a folder with the script in it. I was like, “This is amazing.” Because it was him, and I love him, I was thinking, I’m going to do the script because it’s you, but I loved the script. The writing is super-sharp, the relationships are brilliant. Honestly it’s totally different from this one. It’s a really fantastic script and getting to work with him again would be amazing.
Q: What did you learn working with him on “Cleaner” that made you think, “Oh, I need to do this when he films his next movie?”
Daisy Ridley: Interestingly, one of the things that he talks about a lot is musicality in lines. it’s something I had never been cognizant of, but was something that he’s very specific about — the musicality of lines. He’ll often listen to a take and not watch it, which I’ve never seen happen with a director before, just to feel the rhythm of the music, of the language, which was quite lovely.
What I love about him and these films — he’s amazing at action of course — but he’s so specific about character. The thing he loves to say is he’ll come in and go communion, communion. I love that word now. To me it just means what are you doing with this other actor, are you close enough? Are you sharing enough? And so he’ll come over and just be so close to your face, running it before you shoot it and then you’ll come in and do it again. It’s a wonderful way to work.
Q: You did this video game called “Trailblazer.” It comes out next month. You produce and star. What can you tell people about it?
Daisy Ridley: It’s the story of Bertha Benz, who was the first woman ever to do a road trip. Basically her husband had invented a car, but he had crashed it. It had all gone wrong and it was illegal for women to be out doing anything like that in those times. She snuck off in the car and did this 60-mile journey. In the process she had to figure out the gearing on a car and had to figure out the water system. There were various things she did along the way. So, in the age of innovation, she was really a real pro trailblazer.
Q: Have you played the finished version of the game?
Daisy Ridley: I haven’t, no. It looked beautiful, the images that I’ve seen.
Q: Is it like a steaming game or is it a console game?
Daisy Ridley: I think it’s VR.
Q: Next month “We Bury the Dead” premieres. What do you tell people about it? What are you excited for people to see in it?
Daisy Ridley:I t will be a very beautiful thing to see how people react to “We Bury the Dead” because my mom and sister watched it separately and my mom said, “oh, it was so sad.” And my sister said, “oh, it was so scary.” I was like, that’s great because it’s a zombie movie, but at the heart of it is a woman trying to find her husband and she doesn’t know what she’s going to find, if he’s alive or dead or somewhere in between. Yeah, it’s beautiful.
Q:Is this project still happening, or did “Women in the Castle” happen?
Daisy Ridley: That did not happen. I was desperate for it to happen.
Q: Do you have a favorite piece of Star Wars merch?
Daisy Ridley: My lightsaber. It’s so funny too, I had just it put in a random place the other day.
Q: You mean you have the actual prop?
Daisy Ridley: Yes. I actually have two.
Q: What about the toys and stuff they made? Do you have any of that stuff?
Daisy Ridley: I have had so much of it and then I was like, “it’s really weird to just have loads of stuff with your own face on it.” That went out to various friends and families. I really have BB-8 in my car that I just can’t part with. I just can’t take it out of the car. It’s just been there.
Q: What is your favorite part about being in the Star Wars universe? There’s a lot of girls who see you in real life and must give you a double take?
Daisy Ridley: It’s weird. I feel like the double take has been happening more recently. It’s interesting. There were really times where it became more, yeah, I don’t know. It’s strange, it sort of waves, but the best thing about being part of it is that I get to be part of it. I think really it’s such a, yeah, it’s weird. Someone was talking about the [Disney] Celebration announcement for me doing the new one and honestly, nothing feels like being in that room. It’s the most unbelievable thing when people are united in their love for something. It just so happens that I’m part of Star Wars as well. It’s just so beautiful. Ultimately a film about good versus evil and people overcoming, it’s just the feeling that we all have together is the best part.
©Courtesy of Quiver Distribution
Q: The next one is going to be in Tokyo for the next celebration. Do you have any plans to go to Tokyo?
Daisy Ridley: I might be doing something then production-wise, I was hoping to go, but I don’t know.
Q: You’re attached to “Mind Fall,” which sounds like an effing cool project.
Daisy Ridley: That was one of those things that it was supposed to go and then Covid happened. But I’m still hopeful. I’ve become very comfortable with things either taking 10 years to get made or get made tomorrow, and that’s one of them that I really hope gets made.
Q: It’s the beginning of 2025. What do you have lined up that you’re filming this year? Can you tell people what’s been announced and what hasn’t been announced?
Daisy Ridley: There’s something next month that is very exciting that once I’m able to share it, it’s literally a dream.
Q: Are you training right now or are you thinking about it?
Daisy Ridley: I’m thinking about it. then there’s potentially something after that. There are so many potentials happening this year. If all of the potential things were happening, I would have literally not a moment to spare, but I would hope that the other thing that’s potentially happening, I’ll know in the next couple weeks. I don’t want to jinx it. That’s the other thing.
Q: Hopefully you’ll also come up with another idea for a movie.
Daisy Ridley: Oh, I have. My husband Tom [Bateman] and I are doing something. He wrote “Magpie” and he has written something else that we’ve been waiting for the green light on, that might be being greenlit. Actually I’ve had an idea that I’m working on with someone else that’s very exciting, but that will be strange because it’s the first time I’ve done that with another writer.
Q: Are you cheating on your husband?
Daisy Ridley: Honestly, when I went to the meeting he was like, “I can’t believe you are doing this.” [Audience laughs.] We had talked about it and honestly, he doesn’t have the bandwidth. He’s also writing something else. That was his idea but we will do it together.
Q: Sometimes you need some kind of help to get rolling.
Daisy Ridley: No, but I want to be in it. He’s basically written out the whole thing without having written out the script. But it’s so fantastic. I can’t wait to read the script.
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