Carrie Fisher

Carrie Frances Fisher entered the world in Burbank, California, on October 21, 1956. She was the firstborn of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. Todd Fisher, her younger brother, soon followed. Being the daughter of celebrities, her life was in the spotlight from the very start. Following her parents' divorce, her mother wed Harry Karl, the widower of actress Marie McDonald. The family expanded to include Karl and McDonald's child, along with two adopted children. Carrie's father went on to have children with actress Connie Stevens, resulting in Carrie's half-sisters, Joely and Tricia Fisher. She famously quipped in her stage show and book, Wishful Drinking, that this made her "a product of Hollywood inbreeding."

After Debbie Reynolds' contract with MGM Studios concluded, Carrie Fisher occasionally joined her mother on stage in Las Vegas nightclub acts and Broadway musicals. She didn't complete her high school education. Before her role in Star Wars, she appeared in the film Shampoo, auditioned for other roles, and, at the age of seventeen, enrolled at the Central School of Speech and Drama in England.

While attending school in London in early December 1975, Fisher received a call from her friend Fred Roos, who was assisting George Lucas with casting for Star Wars: A Space Fantasy. Roos believed Fisher should meet Lucas and audition for Princess [Leia Organa](/article/leia_skywalker_organa_solo]; however, Fisher was unable to leave her school to audition in Los Angeles. Terri Nunn was Lucas' top choice, but the role had not been cast when Fisher returned home for 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 found the prospect exciting, especially the chance to work "with Wookiees, with the monsters in the cantina." Simultaneously, director Brian De Palma was casting for his film Carrie, and Fisher also auditioned for that role. She thought it would be a "funny casting coup if I got it: Carrie as Carrie in Carrie." She felt anxious during her interviews with both De Palma and Lucas, feeling self-conscious about her responses to De Palma's questions and struggling to engage in conversation with Lucas, who was "all-but-silent". When she did video tests and chemistry reads on December 30 with Harrison Ford for Han Solo and Mark Hamill for Luke Skywalker, Lucas remained quiet, but casting director Diane Crittenden was impressed by her, stating, "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."

Fisher, however, recounted, "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 chose Fisher as the final lead, believing she could embody all the character's necessary traits. As a relatively unknown actress, she was to be paid $850 weekly, compared to Ford's $750 and Hamill's $1,000. Veteran actor Peter Cushing, playing Grand Moff Tarkin, would receive £2,000 per day.

Upon being cast, Fisher was instructed to lose weight, specifically ten pounds, as she later stated. She briefly attended a "fat farm" in Texas but left after a week. "I only weighed 110 pounds to begin with," she explained, "but I carried about half of them in my face." She decided to avoid attracting attention, hoping no one would notice she hadn't lost the weight.

Carrie Fisher voiced concerns regarding her character's hair and wardrobe. One costume sketch depicted Leia in what Fisher described as a "little Peter Pan leotard," and she tried on at least thirty different hairstyles. Arriving in London, she had her first costume fitting on April 20, 1976. Costume designer John Mollo added a slit to the side of the white dress to facilitate movement, and hair dresser Patricia McDermott experimented with the double-bun hairstyle that would become Leia's iconic look. When Fisher showcased it for George Lucas and others, producer Gary Kurtz found it flattering, and Lucas inquired about her opinion. "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!'"

During rehearsals, Harrison Ford would often revise the wording or order of his lines, while Fisher stuck to the original script. She later commented, "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."

Fisher's first week of filming spanned from April 27 to May 4, 1976. On April 28, she and Mark Hamill filmed the scene where Leia and Luke swing across the chasm. Other days involved physically demanding scenes, such as running through hallways. These scenes were uncomfortable due to the lack of supportive undergarments; instead, she wore gaffer's tape. Lucas had insisted that underwear was not worn in space because bodies would expand, but brassieres would not, leading to strangulation. Fisher humorously stated 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."

During her initial scene with Peter Cushing, the exchange between Leia and Tarkin on the Death Star, she struggled to convey genuine anger towards Cushing because she admired him greatly. She had to imagine him as someone else, yet it was still challenging to deliver the "foul stench" line when "the man smelled like linen and lavender." In her final memoir, The Princess Diarist, she noted that the formality of the dialogue led her to unintentionally adopt a "vaguely British" accent when Leia was upset, with a less pronounced accent for her "not-upset voice." Looking back, she wished she had 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!"

In May 1976, on one of the early Fridays of the shoot, the cast and crew threw a surprise party for Lucas's 32nd birthday. That evening, Fisher and Ford began an affair that lasted until he finished shooting in late June. When not filming, she shared meals with Peter Mayhew (Chewbacca), actress Koo Stark (Camie), Mark Hamill, and crew member Peter Kohn.

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 recalled, "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 unique accent and difficulty remembering the lines did not intimidate her.

The garbage masher scene, filmed from June 21 to June 22, involved standing in increasingly stagnant water. Fisher wore a wet suit for protection. The subsequent hallway scene was also unpleasant due to the extreme heat. She wasn't standing straight and walked too quickly because she wanted to leave the hallway, but Lucas gave her clear instructions, which she remembered 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 finished 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.

Upon her return on July 4, she gifted Lucas a Buck Rogers helium pistol, which he then played with constantly at the studio. She enjoyed the scene where Leia is stunned by a stormtrooper "because I knew I would have to do what my mother called 'pratfalls'." Leia's hologram message was filmed on her and Hamill's final day, July 16, with Fisher standing on a turntable to facilitate rotation and filming from various angles. She worked a total of 37 days out of the 84-day shoot.

In 1977, Fisher took on the role of Leia Organa in the original Star Wars film, written and directed by George Lucas, alongside Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, Peter Cushing, and Alec Guinness. Star Wars became an enormous hit, catapulting her to international fame. Fisher reprised her role as Princess Leia in the 1978 made-for-TV movie The Star Wars Holiday Special, and again in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983).

Rumors of an affair with Harrison Ford during the filming of the original Star Wars circulated for many years. While Fisher acknowledged having a crush on Ford and spending considerable time with him off-camera, she initially denied any affair. However, in her 2016 autobiographical book, The Princess Diarist, Fisher confirmed that she and Ford had, in fact, engaged in an affair.

Her character, Leia, became a merchandising sensation, with small plastic dolls of her appearing in toy stores across the United States. Fisher often joked that Princess Leia, rather than herself, had become famous, and she merely resembled her. Away from the Star Wars sets, she recounted, "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 a 2005 public radio interview, Fisher humorously discussed being primarily known for her role as Princess Leia, and also joked about fearing that senility might cause her to revert to the character.

For The Phantom Menace, she contributed uncredited dialogue for the scene where C-3PO and R2-D2 first meet.

In early March of 2013, Fisher confirmed in an interview with the Palm Beach Illustrated magazine that she would be returning to reprise her role as Princess Leia in The Force Awakens. In a ABC News interview in December 2015, she stated that George Lucas himself asked her to be a part of the third trilogy. In July 2016, she completed filming for the sequel, The Last Jedi. An animatronic creature inspired by Fisher's dog, Gary, made an appearance in The Last Jedi during the Canto Bight sequence. The character was referred to as "Gary" or "Space Gary" on set.

Carrie Fisher hosted the November 18, 1978, episode of Saturday Night Live, appearing on stage dressed as Princess Leia. Her hair was styled in the iconic fashion from A New Hope, resembling an Imperial TIE fighter. She began the show with a lengthy "joke" consisting entirely of Star Wars references. She also appeared in a sketch, again as Leia, singing and dancing with a group of 1950s teenagers.

In the film Scream 3 (2000), Fisher's character, Bianca Burnette, is mistaken for Carrie Fisher. Fisher made fun of 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?!" 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.

On December 23, 2016, reports surfaced that Fisher was in critical condition after experiencing a major heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles. She passed away on December 27, 2016, at the age of 60. Her mother, Debbie Reynolds, died just one day later. On January 6, 2017, a joint private funeral service was held, followed by burial at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills. A portion of Fisher's ashes was placed in her mother's coffin, with the remainder housed in one of her prized possessions: a large porcelain urn shaped like a prozac pill.

In a tribute to Fisher on StarWars.com, she was honored as an actress, screenwriter, author, and advocate for mental health. Her life was also celebrated at Celebration Orlando in April 2017, during the opening panel, "40 Years of Star Wars," and in "Mark Hamill's Tribute to Carrie Fisher," where Hamill spoke extensively about his experiences with Fisher during the filming of the original trilogy and beyond.

• Carrie Fisher - The Official Carrie Fisher Website
• Carrie Fisher on Wikipedia
• Carrie Fisher at the Internet Movie Database