- "What would I be if I weren't Princess Leia? […] Never have been in an airport and heard someone shout, 'Princess!' as though that were my actual name, enabling and requiring me to turn around and politely respond, 'Yes?' Never have had my entire planet blown up in front of me (including my mother and entire record collection), while looking at a small blackboard with a circle on it, never have talked to robots or teeny bearlike creatures whom I would then feed snacks. Never have been asked, 'Who do you think you would've turned out to be if you weren't an intergalactic princess?' I'd be me. You know, Carrie. Just me."
- ―Carrie Fisher, in her final memoir
Carrie Frances Fisher (October 21, 1956[1]–December 27, 2016[2]) was an American actress, best known for her portrayal of Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars franchise.
Biography[]
Early life[]
- "One actress in particular seemed tailor-made to play a princess. As the daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher, Carrie Fisher was the product of Hollywood royalty."
- ―Ed Singer
Carrie Frances Fisher was born in Burbank, California on October 21, 1956, as the first child of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds; the couple also had her younger brother, Todd Fisher. From birth, she was in the public eye. After her parents divorced, her mother remarried Harry Karl, the widower of actress Marie McDonald, and the family later took in Karl and McDonald's child and two adopted children. Carrie's father eventually had children with actress Connie Stevens: Carrie's half-sisters Joely and Tricia Fisher. She joked in her stage show and book Wishful Drinking that this all made her "a product of Hollywood inbreeding."[5]
After Debbie Reynolds' contract with MGM Studios expired, Carrie Fisher occasionally performed with her mother in Las Vegas nightclub shows and in Broadway musicals; she did not finish high school. Prior to Star Wars, she acted in the film Shampoo, auditioned for others, and enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama in England when she was seventeen.[3]
Casting for a space fantasy[]
- "I had another girl who was much younger, who looked like what you might envision as a princess. She was very pretty and petite, but she also had an edge to her. Whereas Carrie is a very warm person; she's a fun-loving, goofy kid who can also play a very hard, sophisticated, tough leader. This other girl couldn't play sweet and goofy. Whereas with Carrie, if she played a tough person, somehow underneath it you knew that she really had a warm heart. So I cast it that way. The princess is one of the main characters, so the actress was going to have to be able to generate a lot of strength very quickly with limited resources available—and I thought Carrie could do it."
- ―George Lucas, on casting Carrie Fisher instead of Terri Nunn for Princess Leia Organa
While Fisher was at school in London in early December 1975, she was contacted by her friend Fred Roos, who was assisting George Lucas with casting for Star Wars: A Space Fantasy. Roos thought Fisher should meet with Lucas and test for Princess Leia Organa; however, Fisher could not leave her school obligations to audition in Los Angeles. Terri Nunn was Lucas' front-runner but the role was not yet cast when Fisher returned home for her Christmas break, was contacted again, and received the script pages for a scene where Leia revealed what the droid R2-D2 was carrying in his memory banks. She was excited about it, particularly about being involved "with Wookiees, with the monsters in the cantina."[6] At the time, director Brian De Palma was also casting for his film Carrie, and Fisher read for it as well; she thought it would be a "funny casting coup if I got it: Carrie as Carrie in Carrie." She was nervous in her interview with both De Palma and Lucas, self-conscious about her answers De Palma's questions and struggling to have any conversation with the "all-but-silent" Lucas.[3] When she did video tests and chemistry reads on December 30 with Harrison Ford for Han Solo and Mark Hamill for Luke Skywalker, Lucas was still quiet, but casting director Diane Crittenden was impressed by her and said, "Carrie was very unique in that she was formidable for an eighteen-year-old. She had a tremendous amount of sophistication, so in fact the hardest thing to do was to get her to be young."[6]
Fisher, on the other hand, said, "They taped a rehearsal and they taped another one, and there was very little direction—and I thought, There is no way that I have it. I didn't hear anything for about three weeks, so I thought, Well, I'm not going to get to have lunch with monsters." She was mistaken—by late January 1976, Lucas decided on Fisher as the last of the leads, believing she could embody all of the character's qualities. As a relative unknown, she would receive a weekly salary of $850, with $750 for Ford and $1,000 for Hamill; veteran actor Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin would be paid £2,000 per day.[6]
When Fisher was cast, she was told to lose weight;[7] she later specified the amount as ten pounds.[5][3] Although she entered what was then called a "fat farm" in Texas, she left after one week. "I only weighed 110 pounds to begin with," she said, "but I carried about half of them in my face." She resolved to avoid drawing notice so no one would realize she had not lost weight.[3]
Experiences on the first film[]
- "We'd go to lunch at the Chinese restaurant, and I'd have my 'hairy earphones' on, and Pete Mayhew is seven foot two, but they'd serve us like we were regular people. That was my favorite part. I'd go out to get cigarettes and magazines in my entire outfit, and… nothing. They would just give them to me."
- ―Carrie Fisher, on the indifference of the locals
Carrie Fisher had concerns about her eventual hair and wardrobe; one of the costume sketches depicted Leia in what Fisher called a "little Peter Pan leotard" and she tested at least thirty hairdos. After arriving in London, she had her first costume fitting on April 20, 1976. Costume designer John Mollo added a slit up the side of the white dress to aid her movement,[6] and hair dresser Patricia McDermott tested the double-bun hairstyle that became Leia's signature look. When Fisher modeled it for George Lucas and others, producer Gary Kurtz thought it was flattering and Lucas asked her what she thought of it. "Now, remember, I hadn't lost the requisite ten pounds and I thought any minute they'd notice and fire me before the film even started. So, I replied, 'I love it!'"[3]
As Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, and Carrie Fisher went over their lines together, Ford would revise the wording or the order of his lines. Fisher did not change hers, but later said, "I was very impressed that he could do that. I didn't know what to do with them. They seemed fine like they were. I was also being agreeable because I kept thinking they were going to realize their mistake soon about hiring me."[6]
Fisher's first week of filming was April 27–May 4, 1976. On April 28, she joined Mark Hamill to film Leia and Luke's swing across the chasm. Other days involved further physical performances, such as running down hallways. The scenes were physically uncomfortable for her because she lacked supportive undergarments,[6] instead having gaffer's tape. Lucas had insisted there was no underwear in space because bodies would expand but brassieres would not, resulting in strangulation. Fisher quipped in Wishful Drinking, "Now I think that this would make for a fantastic obit—so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra."[5]
Peter Cushing, George Lucas, and Carrie Fisher on set
In her first scene with Peter Cushing, the initial exchange between Leia and Tarkin on the Death Star, she had difficulty portraying real anger towards Cushing because she liked him so much. She had to imagine him as someone else, but it was still a challenge to deliver the "foul stench" line when "the man smelled like linen and lavender."[6] She wrote in her final memoir, The Princess Diarist, that the formality of the dialogue led Fisher to unintentionally use a "vaguely British" voice when Leia was upset, with less of an accent for her "not-upset voice." In hindsight, she would have rewritten her lines to something like, "Hey, Governor Tarkin, I knew I'd see you here. When I got on board this ship I thought, My God! What is that smell? It's gotta be Governor Tarkin. Everyone knows that the guy smells like a wheel of cheese that someone found in their car after seven weeks!"[3]
In May 1976, on one of the first Fridays of the shoot, the cast and crew had a surprise party for Lucas' 32nd birthday. That night, Fisher and Ford began an affair that lasted until he completed shooting[3] in late June. When she was not filming, she had meals with Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca),[6] actress Koo Stark (Camie), Mark Hamill, and crew member Peter Kohn.[3]
On May 12, she filmed with David Prowse as Darth Vader for their prison cell scene. "I was in a little box of a room," she said, "so I used the idea of claustrophobia to make it scary. But it was hard to be afraid of Darth Vader." Prowse delivered Vader's lines on set, to be dubbed later, and his particular accent and difficulty remembering the lines were not intimidating to her.[6]
The garbage masher scene from June 21 to June 22 involved standing in stagnant water that got worse over time; Fisher wore a wet suit for protection. The subsequent hallway scene was also unpleasant to film due to extreme heat. She was not standing up straight and walked too fast because she wanted out of the hallway, but Lucas gave her clear directions, which she recalled as, "'Now, act more like a princess. Stand up straight.' Very black-and-white direction. Not anything weird and bizarre like other directors would say. It was very specific." Ford completed filming on June 24, and he and Fisher were on the same flight to Los Angeles on June 28; she was taking a break before her final two weeks.[6]
When she returned on July 4, she brought Lucas the gift of a Buck Rogers helium pistol, which he then constantly played with the studio. She enjoyed the scene of Leia getting stunned by a stormtrooper "because I knew I would have to do what my mother called 'pratfalls'." Leia's hologram message was shot on her and Hamill's final day, July 16, with Fisher standing on a turntable so she could be easily rotated and filmed from different angles. She worked a total of 37 days out of the 84-day shoot.[6]
Star Wars[]
- "We signed away our likeness, so when I look in the mirror, I have to pay George a couple of bucks."
- ―Carrie Fisher, joking about the success of Star Wars
Fisher relaxing on the set of The Empire Strikes Back.
In 1977, Fisher starred as Leia Organa in the original Star Wars film, directed and written by George Lucas, along with Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Peter Cushing, and Alec Guinness. Star Wars was a huge success and made her internationally famous. Fisher again appeared as Princess Leia in the 1978 made-for-TV movie The Star Wars Holiday Special. She appeared again as Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983).
It was rumored for years that she had an affair with Harrison Ford while filming the original Star Wars film; while Fisher admitted she had a crush on Ford and spent much time with him off camera, she denied having an affair with him. In 2016, however, Fisher admitted in her autobiographical title, The Princess Diarist, that she did, in fact, have an affair with Ford.[8]
Her character of Leia became a merchandising triumph; there were small plastic dolls of her in every toy store across the United States. Fisher often joked that it was actually Princess Leia who became famous, and she just happened to look like her. Off the set of Star Wars films, she commented, "I used to go in though airports and have people say; 'Princess Leia!' Like I would then go; 'Yes?' You know, like that's my real name." In an interview on public radio in 2005, Fisher joked about being known overwhelmingly for her role as Princess Leia, and also joked that she was afraid if she ever became senile she might begin to slip back into character.
For The Phantom Menace, she wrote dialogue, uncredited, for the moment when C-3PO and R2-D2 meet for the very first time.[9]
Carrie Fisher and her beloved emotional support dog, Gary, together at Celebration Europe in 2016.
In early March of 2013, Fisher confirmed in an interview with the Palm Beach Illustrated magazine that she would return to reprise her role as Princess Leia in The Force Awakens.[10] In an interview for ABC News in December 2015, she confirmed that it was George Lucas who came directly to ask her to be part of the third trilogy.[11] In July 2016, she wrapped filming on the follow-up, The Last Jedi.[12] An animatronic creature inspired by Fisher's dog, Gary,[13] appeared in The Last Jedi during the Canto Bight sequence.[14] The character was known as "Gary"[15] or "Space Gary" on set.[16]
References to Star Wars[]
Carrie Fisher hosted the November 18, 1978 episode of Saturday Night Live, in which she came onto the stage outfitted as Princess Leia. This was complete to her hair being arranged into the hairstyle she had employed throughout most of A New Hope, which some people had noted resembled an Imperial TIE fighter. She opens the show by telling a long "joke" based entirely on Star Wars references. She then appeared in a sketch, again as Leia, in which she sings and dances with a group of 1950s teenagers.
In the film Scream 3 (2000), Fisher's character, Bianca Burnette, is mistaken for Carrie Fisher. Fisher pokes fun at herself with the line, "Yeah, I was up for the part of Princess Leia. But who gets it? The girl who slept with George Lucas!" Fisher also joked about this during her speech at Lucas's AFI Life Achievement Award ceremony, quipping that "I hope I slept with you to get the job, because if not, who the hell was that guy?!"[17] In the 2009 film Fanboys, Fisher's character references the famous "I love you/I know" line from both The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
Death[]
- "…she will always be the princess who took command and never backed down. Never was in jeopardy. She was always helping the other guys get out of the messes they created. We'll all love her forever and ever."
- ―George Lucas
Fisher poses with Mark Hamill in a promotional publicity photo for The Last Jedi shortly before her death
On December 23, 2016, Fisher was reported to be in critical condition following a major heart attack while on a flight back to Los Angeles from London.[19] She died on December 27, 2016, at the age of 60.[20] Her mother, Debbie Reynolds, died one day after her. On January 6, 2017, they had a joint private funeral service followed by burial at Hollywood Hills' Forest Lawn Memorial Park. A portion of Fisher's ashes were placed in her mother's coffin and the rest inside one of her favorite possessions: a large prozac pill-shaped porcelain urn.[21]
In a tribute to Fisher on StarWars.com, she was remembered as an actress, screenwriter, author, and mental health advocate.[2] Her life was also celebrated at Celebration Orlando in April, 2017, during the kick-off panel "40 Years of Star Wars"[22] and in "Mark Hamill's Tribute to Carrie Fisher."[23]
Works[]
Filmography[]
| Year | Title | Contribution(s) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1977 | Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope | Leia Organa | |
| 1978 | The Star Wars Holiday Special | Leia Organa | |
| 1980 | Star Wars: Episode V The Empire Strikes Back | Leia Organa | |
| 1982 | Return of the Ewok | Herself, Leia Organa | |
| 1983 | Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi | Leia Organa | |
| 1999 | Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace | Additional dialogue | Uncredited[9] |
| 2015 | Star Wars: Episode VII The Force Awakens | Leia Organa Solo | |
| 2016 | Rogue One: A Star Wars Story | Special thanks | |
| 2017 | Star Wars: Episode VIII The Last Jedi | Leia Organa Solo | |
| 2019 | Star Wars: Episode IX The Rise of Skywalker | Leia Organa Solo | Used archival footage |
Gameography[]
| Year | Title | Contribution(s) |
|---|---|---|
| 2016 | LEGO Star Wars: The Force Awakens | Leia Organa Solo |
