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An Ode To Carrie Fisher: The Princess’s Star Wars Legacy

By Elaine Tveit

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Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher passed away today at the age of 60. She left us her legacy in the indomitable, wise and beautiful Leia, the ultimate princess.

Carrie Fisher changed the world when she accepted the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars.

Image Credit: Lucasfilm

The change may have been slow to take hold, but it is obvious today. For what may have been the first time in film history, a space princess was not introduced as a sex symbol. She was not helpless, and she did not scream and faint all over the place. In fact, one could say she did more to save herself than Han and Luke did.

Carrie was just as revolutionary a person as her on-screen persona. She was completely unapologetic. She suffered addiction and mental health problems and survived a painful divorce. In her later years, she was bold and direct. She was a funny lady and her jokes never shied away from uncomfortable truths.

Image Credit: Lucasfilm

Thanks to her honesty, we know a lot about Carrie’s personal experience filming the Star Wars saga. We know she wore tape instead of a bra because “there is no underwear in space.” From her autobiography, The Princess Diarist, we learned she had a love affair with her co-star, Harrison Ford. “It was so intense,” she wrote. “It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend.”

More recently, Carrie struggled with image issues as she worked to adopt a Hollywood-approved figure for her reprisal as Leia in The Force Awakens. She told Good Housekeeping, “I’m in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say get younger, because that’s how easy it is.”

Image Credit: Lucasfilm

That’s what makes Carrie so relatable: her struggle. She didn’t live a perfect life or cultivate perfect health or a perfect figure. But the way she handled all the difficulties in her life made her strong. She wrote and joked about them. And she got help. Like Princess Leia, Carrie Fisher fought to solve the problems in her life instead of succumbing to them. That’s probably why she was so good at portraying Leia, both in the original trilogy and in The Force Awakens. Like Leia, she’d been to hell and back. Now, we believe, she is in heaven.

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Rest in peace, your highness. To me, you will always be royalty.

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