Daisy Ridley thinks her career success is down to the encouragement of her mother.

The 32-year-old actress is best known for her role as Rey in the 'Star Wars' franchise but is now starring as Olympic swimmer Gertrude Ederle in the new biopic 'Young Woman and the Sea' and recalled that her mother Louise always managed find "balance" in life as she told her to just give acting a try, even when she had no clue about the indistry.

She told OK! Magazine: "Trudy is a true role model. Who were your role models growing up?

I grew up with two sisters. We fought like animals and loved each other fiercely. I'm the youngest, so I always wanted to be like them, but also do my own thing. I grew up in a household with a mother who always balanced work and family. She had her own life, but was a committed parent. She never deterred me or my sisters from what we were doing. It was, 'OK! If you want to try it, sure.'

"She's forever committed to all of us. I think part of my determination in wanting to be an actor is because I had a mum saying, 'Well, try.' I didn't know about agents. There was so much I didn't know. And with Trudy, there's so much she didn't really know, too. How's she going to get to swim the Channel? She just knows it's what she wants. I would draw comparisons in the determination of being allowed to have a dream and try things out."

In the film, Daisy had to film her own stunts in the water but admitted that she had a "fear" of it to begin with and worried that she was going to be "eaten by a shark" on set.

She said: " At the beginning, I told [producer] Jerry Bruckheimer and [director] Joachim Rønning that I had a bit of a fear of open water. That was underselling it, because I actually don't go in the sea beyond where. I can see the floor. I knew there weren't sharks where we were filming in the Black Sea, but I was like, "Am I going to get eaten by a shark?" It was an obstacle, mentally."