Carrie Fisher was a creative force capable of more than just portraying the most famous princess in the galaxy. Here are five facts about the actress.
Carrie Fisher was a legend in Hollywood. Though she was known primarily for her role as Princess Leia in the Star Wars Skywalker saga, Fisher was so much more than an actress. As the daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds, Fisher had a unique childhood, which became the springboard for many of the opportunities she was able to pursue throughout her life.
The world was devastated when the actress died unexpectedly in 2016, but her legacy lives on in the impressive body of work she left behind. Here are five little-known facts about the late actress.
1. Fisher didn’t always believe in Star Wars
Like many of the people who worked on the original Star Wars, Fisher didn’t believe the film would be successful. The film was plagued by challenge after challenge from the start of production, so it was a surprise to everyone that Star Wars became the groundbreaking blockbuster it became. Fisher wasn’t a fan of the hairstyle or the dialogue she had to say in the movie. Despite her initial skepticism about the movie, Fisher maintained a close relationship with her character and with George Lucas throughout the rest of her life.
2. Fisher was a prolific author
When people think of Carrie Fisher, they naturally think of her role as an actress, but what few people realize is that Fisher was creative in other ways as well. Fisher released her first novel in 1987. A semi-autobiographical work, Postcards from the Edge told the story of a film actress fighting a battle with drug addiction. The novel was mostly well-received and established Fisher as an author. She went on to publish more novels and published her final memoir The Princess Diarist shortly before her death in 2016, which chronicled her experience of making Star Wars. The book included the surprising revelation of her affair with then-married Harrison Ford during the filming of Star Wars.
3. Fisher was a successful Hollywood script doctor
Fisher’s gift for telling a story and spinning words together in a clear way paved the way for another side career in the 1990s. Fisher worked as a script doctor for several Hollywood movies. A script doctor helps make a script better by improving dialogue, description, or sometimes through an overall rewrite. Even though script doctors perform a vital role in the scriptwriting process, they often go uncredited, but their impact is felt by the improved quality of every movie they work on. Fisher was a much sought-after script doctor and performed rewrites on the scripts for The Wedding Singer, Hook, and Sister Act, though her work was uncredited.
4. Lucas was impressed with Fisher’s writing capabilities
In addition to being a script doctor for many Hollywood films, Fisher was invited by George Lucas himself to polish the scripts for his 1992 television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. It’s also rumored that she was brought in to work on the dialogue for the Star Wars prequels. Fisher took her work as a script doctor so seriously that she even did re-writes of Princess Leia’s dialogue from Star Wars, even though it would never be used. This goes to show how well she grew to truly understand and embody the character of Leia.
5. She once played a character mistaken for herself
In the third film in the popular horror film franchise Scream, Fisher played a former actress named Bianca Burnett, who works in the archives of Sunrise Studios. Gale Weathers, the character portrayed by Courtney Cox, is aided by Fisher’s character, and the character reveals that she is often mistaken for actress Carrie Fisher. In fact, there’s a joke in the film that Burnette once auditioned for the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars, but the character says that Carrie Fisher got the role by sleeping with George Lucas. In addition to being in the film, Fisher is said to have improvised some of her lines in the film and doctored some of the script.
For more facts, check out the Star Wars Actors category on Dork Side of the Force.