Princess Leia Remains a Truly Iconic Character, But Carrie Fisher's Greatest Role Was Herself

Carrie Fisher's Star Wars role made her a Hollywood immortal—but it was her approach to life's ups and downs that gave her staying power.

By Natalie Finn Dec 27, 2021 7:00 PMTags
Watch: Carrie Fisher on Reprising Princess Leia Role for "Force Awakens"

There are so few true icons.

"Iconic" is a word that gets thrown around haphazardly, having become interchangeable with any word that connotes fame and losing its primary definition as something inspiring unflagging, uncritical devotion.

Yet Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia fits the bill.

When every other movie and TV show these days is a spin-off, a reboot, a remake, the mass-entertainment moments that resonate as singular are becoming increasingly rare. Even fewer and more far between are truly memorable characters, ones that transcend their respective medium and end up seared into the pop culture lexicon.

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Carrie Fisher: A Life in Pictures

Fisher, who died five years ago, became one of the most recognizable people in the world after starring in George Lucas' Star Wars trilogy. Starting with 1977's Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, Fisher's Princess Leia Organa—a clever, headstrong damsel who may have needed saving a few times but whose wits and courage kept her from ever being too distressed—became a part of our collective history.

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Forty-five years ago, there were no such things as viral memes, Twitter, YouTube, Reddit or Tumblr (or Internet, for that matter), where endless movie conspiracy theories are born and fanatically probed. Yet the magic that was Star Wars—not least of which was due to Leia, her twin-bun hairstyle, her legendary gold bikini moment and her ascendance to the Imperial Senate—reached icon status all on its low-tech own.

And the kind of magic that only happens in movies was required after Fisher's sudden death in December 2016 in order to keep featuring Leia in two subsequent Star Wars films after her triumphant return to the fold as a seasoned general of the resistance in 2015's Episode VII: The Force Awakens. She ultimately had appeared in just enough footage to spread across two more movies, but more than industrial light was needed to believably integrate Leia into Episode VIII: The Last Jedi and Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker

The quality of the most recent additions to the franchise is still being debated, but as far as the original Lucas-directed trilogy goes, whether or not you care about sci-fi or space or intergalactic warfare spanning generations, Fisher alone makes Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi worth watching, full stop. (And really, if you have feeling left in your body, you'll be touched by the emotional and nostalgic heft of her final performance in the last three.)

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Only 19 when she shot the original Star Wars, her second movie after having a brief turn in Shampoo, in addition to being absolutely gorgeous Fisher had a magnetic presence that outshone any plot holes and made capital-M Moments out of what could have been throwaway dialogue for any other actress.

Of course, she didn't work alone. Leia's chemistry with Harrison Ford's Han Solo—which, she revealed in her final book, was being acted out off-camera as well—still radiates four decades later. A split second of the two sharing a tender moment in the 2015 trailer for The Force Awakens was enough to thrill even those with negligible trilogy recall. (Finding out in 2017 that Fisher and co-star Mark Hamill, who played Leia's twin brother, Luke Skywalker, made out "like teenagers" during production on the first film just didn't have the same Tatooine-shattering effect.)

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"I used to sit in the bathtub the night before, go over my lines," Fisher said in a January 1977 interview released more than 30 years later by Lucasfilm. "Like the one in the hallway where I would say, 'This is some rescue! When you came in here didn't you have any plan for getting us out?'"

Lines that would be emblazoned on fans' brains for decades.

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"George wouldn't really say anything in the beginning," she continued. "He would say, 'faster,' or 'more intense.' And I didn't know what that meant. I thought that just meant that I was not very good, or whatever, and then I found out that was OK. I don't remember how I found out, I think maybe Harrison told me that when he didn't talk, when he didn't say anything, that's when he was getting what he wanted."

Lucas said in tribute to Fisher immediately following her death, "In Star Wars she was our great and powerful princess—feisty, wise and full of hope in a role that was more difficult than most people might think."

And while some actors who are forever associated with one particular role grow to have a prickly relationship with that character, Fisher made the most of it—at times begrudgingly, but overall with the same humorous matter-of-factness she applied to so many things.

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"I haven't gotten out," she admitted to E! News in 2015 while promoting The Force Awakens. "I got into Leia 40 years ago and I have not been able to get out since. People want me to be sick of it and I said, as a joke, at some point that George Lucas had ruined my life. Inflection isn't conveyed in written things, so... I was kidding. He doesn't have the power to ruin my life. Only I can do that."

Fisher's life as the child of divorced Hollywood stars Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher also perhaps made her unusually equipped to deal with the ironies and disappointments of life in the spotlight.

"I thought everybody had movie star parents," Fisher said frankly during her first-ever appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1983, when she was promoting Return of the Jedi and was still first and foremost asked about her childhood.

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Debbie Reynolds & Carrie Fisher's Mother-Daughter Moments

Her semi-autobiographical novel (one of several she wrote) Postcards From the Edge, about a fresh-out-of-rehab actress' rocky relationship with her own scene-chewing mother, was turned into a 1990 film starring Meryl Streep (one of her 21 Oscar nominations) and Shirley MacLaine as the tempestuous duo.

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"I had to share her and I didn't like that," Fisher said about Reynolds on NPR's Fresh Air while on an extensive press tour promoting her eighth book, The Princess Diarist, barely a month before she died. "When we went out, people sort of walked over me to get to her, and no, I didn't like it. And people thought—I overheard people saying, 'She thinks she's so great because she's Debbie Reynolds' daughter!' And I didn't like it; it made me different from other people and I wanted to be the same. I wanted to be, you know, just no different than anybody else."

She couldn't help but be different. Not ever inclined to just be Princess Leia, though there wasn't much she could do about her slice of film immortality other than learn to embrace it, Fisher's greatest role was easily herself.

Fisher's gifts as an artist, writer and raconteur gave her a creative outlet for not only her childhood issues but also her personal life (she was married to Paul Simon for barely a year in the 1980s and was mom to daughter Billie Lourd with her talent agent ex Bryan Lourd), mental illness (she opened up about being helped by electroconvulsive therapy in her 2011 book Shockaholic) and what would be her life-long battle with substance abuse.

"We're not enlightened," her brother, Todd Fisher, said upon the release of the autopsy report that revealed there were traces of drugs, including cocaine, in his sister's system. "There's nothing about this that is enlightening." (Tests couldn't pinpoint the cause of death, but sleep apnea and a buildup of fatty tissue on her artery walls were also cited as contributing factors.) 

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Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd's Sweetest Mother-Daughter Moments

Todd's tacit acknowledgment of Fisher's history was understood—because she spent decades being entertainingly candid about the mixed bag of experiences that made up her life.

"I am in the abnormal psychology textbook," she shared in Wishful Drinking, the hit one-woman Broadway show adapted from her 2008 book of the same name, at one point during which she sports Leia's breakfast-Danish hair. "How cool is that? Now keep in mind, I am a Pez dispenser, and I am in the abnormal psychology textbook."

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Though she at times turned her unsparing eye toward the flaws of her famous family and certain people who crossed her path, Fisher owned her issues.

"It's always been my responsibility," she told reporters in 2010, referring to her behavior. "If it was Hollywood [to blame], then we'd all be dope addicts." And she told the Los Angeles Times that she didn't believe in regrets.

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"I know they're human and I have them sometimes," she said. "But I don't like to hang out with them. The only stuff I regret is any discomfort I caused someone else."

Her proclivity for sharing often had inquiring minds asking over the years how that affected her relationships with the people she talked about.

"I think I do overshare," Fisher told NPR in November 2016 when the only thing people were seizing on from The Princess Diarist was her revelation of her affair with Ford. "It's my way of trying to understand myself...It creates community when you talk about private things."

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Carrie Fisher's Most Memorable TV Appearances

But Fisher's candor—though it certainly struck a chord with people who've experienced similar issues and helped fans understand her better—shouldn't be mistaken for an A-to-Z guide to her life. Her relationship with Reynolds, for instance, though they were lived-next-door-to-each-other close, ran on an unknowable fuel, often seeming to teeter atop a precarious foundation of reluctantly resting water under the bridge and caustic wit. 

"I don't think you can predict a manic-depressive, bipolar person," Reynolds told the Los Angeles Times in 2012 about getting along with her only daughter. "I find it an everyday experience, you never really know what's going to happen. So it's kind of interesting. It's like learning to do impressions; you play it by ear. Life should be like that anyway."

As it turned out, their unique bond was actually more of a lifeline. Reynolds died barely 24 hours after her daughter passed away, her last words, according to Todd, to the effect that she wanted to go be with Carrie. The 2017 HBO documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, which had screened at Cannes the previous May, was intended to be a tribute to the inimitable duo in life, but ended up being a coda instead, both humorous and heartbreaking.

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"In fact, she has been more than a mother to me—not much, but definitely more!" Fisher quipped when presenting Reynolds with the life achievement honor at the 2015 SAG Awards, the audience full of Hollywood luminaries laughing knowingly. Also, "She's been an unsolicited stylist, interior decorator and marriage counselor."

In turn, Reynolds recalled onstage, referencing the "ugly bun" her character wore in the 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain, "I warned my daughter, who had just gotten a part in a picture, Princess Leia in Star Wars, I said, 'Well, Carrie, be careful of any weird hairdos.' So luckily, George gave her two buns. Thank you, George."

But that would have just been a memorably over-the-top hairstyle if Carrie Fisher's mind hadn't been what was sandwiched between those buns.

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Though Reynolds had said that her daughter had barely even tapped into her hereditary talents ("She has a great voice. She has Eddie Fisher's voice"), Fisher's appeal couldn't be measured by ordinary standards. Nor did it manifest in ordinary, play-this-part, sing-this-song ways.

Talking to Carson on her Tonight Show appearance in 1983, she recalled shooting a scene in Return of the Jedi: "They just say, 'There's going to be a giant horrible monster with mucous falling from its face, and you do that.'" She mimed a terrified scream. "I started doing the films when I was 19 years old so it's sort of like...that's one of my specialties."

She cracked, "I have trouble reacting to things that are there now, I'm so used to reacting to things that aren't there."

Even then, Fisher was well on her way to becoming an unforgettable one-woman show.

(Originally published Dec. 27, 2016, at 12:45 p.m. PT)