The Star Wars Insider #34 told us that Anakin's mother, named Shmi Skywalker, would be played by Swedish actress Pernilla August. In that same issue Rick McCallum commented on Pernilla saying, "She has all the dignity and power that you could ever want for the role of Anakin's mother." Eventually, as we see in the trailer, Anakin must leave his mother on Tatooine. Presumably she lives to see Episode 2.

Adam Leach just sent us some scans from the British Star Wars magazine. Click on the thumbnails to view a larger version.

• A pic of Shmi and Anakin Skywalker (not the one that we've all seen already, but a different one). Too bad the background is so blurry, I'd love to see what all that is behind them!

The picture below, from the official site, shows Shmi and Anakin at the dinner table:

Lucasfilm registered the domain name www.shmi.net. The official Star Wars site as of May 1998 confirmed that Anakin's mother will be named Shmi Skywalker, as we have been reported.

Delta Source: SPOILERS! Highlight area below to uncover them!

Delta informed us that Shmi would be present during the Pod Race scenes in the Mos Espa Arena.

Unnamed Source: SPOILERS! Highlight area below to uncover them!

An unnamed source confirmed that Anakin and his mother are slaves owned by Watto on Tatooine.