Fisher’s own ‘Star Wars’ journey
‘The Princess Diarist’ revisits those strange days when her star was born
‘The Princess Diarist’ dishes
As the “custodian” of Princess Leia for four decades, the Star Wars character has always bled into Carrie Fisher’s other life as an author.
Leia has played a small role in Fisher’s Postcards From the Edge and Wishful Drinking, but she’s very important to the book the actress is now working on, The
Princess Diarist (out April 26), culled from old journals Fisher kept while filming Star Wars.
“Writing is a very calming thing for me,” says the actress, who plays Leia for a fourth time in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “I always kept a diary — not a diary like, ‘Dear Diary, we got up at 5 a.m. and I wore the weird hair again and that white dress!’ I’d just write. I also didn’t have any friends to confide in at that point, so I’d confide with my hand.”
She pauses. “That sounds dirty.”
As a teenager, she found life on set isolating at times because “there were really no females around, period!” she says. “There was a continuity woman, a hairdresser and a makeup woman, and a stand-in. The rest was a male crew. That still really hasn’t changed a lot.”
When reading her journals now, “I’m very much the same human. More insecure, so at least I’ve grown that way — like 3 inches more,” she says with a laugh.
“The weirdest thing is I say, ‘That’s something I’ve always done. That’s my pattern.’ Your pattern?! You’re 19, you don’t have a pattern! But that’s how I talked then. I had this feeling of being around a long time, but it was actually 20 minutes.”
She had been around fame all her life — she’s the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds — so she had no sense of show business being glamorous.
“I watched my parents’ fame diminish — as I was getting more conscious, their celebrity was going back down the mountain,” Fisher says. “My mother’s over 30” — she gives an audible mocking gasp — “and in those days that was worse. Now you can be over 40 sometimes and it’s OK.
“You knew how humiliating that is as an experience for celebrities to be less of a celebrity. There’s no class to adjust to being less famous, and you don’t think you have to worry about it. But you do.”
“I’m very much the same human. More insecure, so at least I’ve grown that way — like 3 inches more.” On her life since she was 19