Daisy Ridley “Struggled” To Watch MMA While Training For ‘Cleaner’: “So Violent”​on February 19, 2025 at 10:48 pm

Although her latest role doesn’t call for a lightsaber, Daisy Ridley uses new moves to take on the dark side in Cleaner.

The actress recently opened up about what went into the MMA fight sequences she filmed for the Martin Campbell-helmed action movie, which premieres in theaters on Friday via Quiver Distribution.

“I tried to watch MMA fights,” she told UPI. “Honestly, they’re so violent I struggled to watch that many of them.”

Ridley added of her character Joey Locke, “That level of aggression and that level of being very in your body, that was really the thing that was driving me physically for her.”

Set in London, Cleaner takes places in, around, and on the side of One Canada Square, one of the UK’s tallest buildings. The film watches as a group of radical activists, led by Clive Owen, 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 Ridley, suspended 50 stories up on the outside of the building, to save those trapped inside.

When Quiver acquired the film in December, co-presidents Berry Meyerowitz and Jeff Sackman called Cleaner “such an intense ride featuring some of the most vigorous action sequences we have seen in years.”