The Princess Diarist

by Carrie Fisher

  My mother recommended the Green Door in Texas, but it was probably called the Golden Door or something else because the only Green Door that anyone had heard of was a porn film, Behind the Green Door, which was known for making its star, Marilyn Chambers, if not a household name then a whorehouse-hold name. (I had seen it at fifteen, not having heard the phrase “blow job” before.)

  At the Texas fat farm, I met Ann Landers (aka Eppie Lederer), a famous advice columnist, and Lady Bird Johnson, who both took me under their (overweight) wings, which was an uncomfortable place to be. Lady Bird, when I told her the title of Star Wars, thought I’d said Car Wash, and Ann/Eppie gave me a lot of unsolicited advice over a less-than-filling dinner of a burnt-looking partridge that seemed to have been singed and then torched. It was still more than enough; with a heavy heart and heavier face, I left a week later.

  • • •

  when we started filming, I tried to keep myself well under the radar so that the powers that be wouldn’t notice that I hadn’t lost the weight they’d asked me to. I only weighed 110 pounds to begin with, but I carried about half of them in my face. I think they may have put those buns on me so they might function as bookends, keeping my face right where it was, between my ears and no bigger. There I would stay, cheeks in check—my face as round as I was short, but no rounder.

  We usually finished shooting around six thirty p.m., Monday through Friday. The unluckiest members of the cast—a group that definitely included me—were summoned to the set at around five a.m. I rose before dawn; was picked up at my flat in Kensington by my cheerful driver, Colin; and was spirited through the largely still sleeping London to the rosy dawn hem of its outskirts, arriving some forty-five minutes later at the less-than-stern guardrail of Borehamwood Elstree Studios.

  Why was I asked to arrive at this ungodly hour? What monstrous chain of command had selected me apart from many others more deserving, more endowed with tresses thick and wavy tumbling toward their waiting waists?

  Perhaps by now the sci-fi aficionados have guessed it. Yes, that god-awfully laughable Leia hairstyle! There were two hairpieces that were practically bolted to each side of my head. First one, then the other, these long brown tresses that, once latched on grimly, were twisted into some oversized-cinnamon-bun shape, which then—with a deftness that never ceased to amaze me—the hairdresser would very slowly and deliberately wind into the now-famous buns of Navarone.

  Pat McDermott was the hairdresser assigned to supply me with the hairstyle that I would wear in the movie. Having only worn one hairstyle in Shampoo, I couldn’t see how this could be anything but a straightforward task. Apply a wig, brush some hair, affix some hairpins—voilà, hairstyle. What could be simpler? Well, this straightforward task turned out to be a little more than that when you considered Leia’s look would be something worn by children, transvestites, and couples involved in what might be considered a sex fantasy immortalized on the show Friends. There might have been more responsibility involved than first met the eye. Of course, there was no way to know this initially. So Pat attempted to deliver what was requested of her, an unusual hairstyle to be worn by a nineteen-year-old girl playing a princess.

  Pat was from Ireland and spoke with a lovely Irish brogue—causing (or enabling, depending on the morning) her to refer to a movie as a “fill-um.” She also called me “My lovely” or “My dearest girl”: “Isn’t this quite an amazing fill-um, my dearest girl” or “Who is this but my darlin’ girl and that crazy hairstyle I put on her each and every day for the new fill-um they’re makin’.” I doubt she ever said the latter sentence for me, but she could have, and no one would be any the wiser.

  Having arrived oh so early in the a.m., I would invariably fall asleep in the makeup chair, a plain girl with damp scraggly hair—falling just past the shoulder of whatever unprepossessing T-shirt I’d worn that day—and would miraculously awaken two hours later transformed from “Who the hell is she?” into the magnificently mighty mouthful herself, Princess Leia Organa, formerly of Alderaan and presently of anywhere and everywhere she damn well pleased.

  I had endless issues with my appearance in Star Wars. Real ones—not ones you bring up so people think you’re humble because you secretly find yourself adorable. What I saw in the mirror is not apparently what many teenage boys saw. If I’d known about all the masturbating I would generate—well, that would’ve been extraordinarily weird from many angles and I’m glad it didn’t come up, as it were. But when men—fifty-year-old-plus men down to . . . well, the age goes pretty low for statutory comfort—when men approach me to let me know that I was their first love, let’s just say I have mixed feelings. Why did all these men find it so easy to be in love with me then and so complex to be in love with me now?

  • • •

  i had no idea how much time Pat and I would spend together. She was the first person I saw in the morning and the last person I saw at night. But it was the morning bit that was the most intimate. Because the hair took two hours to style, we spent inordinate amounts of time coming up with conversation. The horror is sitting with someone silently. It’s the conversational low. Sure, you can turn on music and sit or stand there smiling vaguely, trying to pretend there’s nowhere else you’d rather be, but . . .

  The sketches of hairstyles that Pat had been given to use as a guideline were shown to me. I looked at her aghast, with much like the expression I used when shown the sketches of the metal bikini. The one I wore to kill Jabba (my favorite moment in my own personal film history), which I highly recommend your doing: find an equivalent of killing a giant space slug in your head and celebrate that. It works wonders when I’m plagued by dark images of my hairy earphones.

  So Pat showed me a variety of exotic looks—from Russian princesses to Swedish maids. I looked at the images, slightly alarmed. There was no Lady Gaga to guide me.

  “These are meant to be worn by me?”

  Pat smiled sympathetically. “Not all of them. Just one. And I’m sure they won’t want you to wear anything you don’t like.”

  I regarded her doubtfully. Those sounded like famous last words.

  “You worry too much,” Pat laughed, smoothing my hair back.

  So image by image, we went through hairstyles that would look best when accompanied by clogs, an apron, and puffy white sleeves. A hairstyle probably sported by an Aztec Indian chief’s daughter on her wedding day. Swirling braids, flowing tresses, and towering wigs. I would sit miserably in front of a mirror and watch while hairstyles did to my face what fun house mirrors do to yours.

  “This isn’t a hairdo, it’s a hair don’t.”

  Pat would politely laugh at what I hoped would pass for wordplay and continue combing, pinning, spraying, teasing. And after each new hairstyle I would stand back at the mirror, gaze at the face, and struggle to make peace with my appearance. Was I round faced and adorable looking? Of course. I see that from this devious distance, but most of us look better at a distance.

  Eventually, we arrived at the hairy-earphone configuration. “Well, what do you think of this one, darling? Be honest now. You’re goin’ to have to wear this hairstyle for a while.” She had no idea exactly how long.

  “It’s okay,” I managed. “I mean, I like it better than a lot of the others! I mean—no offense, but—”

  “Oh, pshaw, darling—no offense taken. I’m just trying to give ’em what they want, though I’m not so sure they know precisely what that is.”

  “Can’t it be something . . . simpler? I mean, why does the hair have to be . . . you know, so . . .”

  “It’s an outer-space fill-um, my lovely, we can’t have you larkin’ about wearin’ what I think you call a ponytail [and here she yanked on my very own ponytail!] with a fringe, can we now?”

  I was silent. I thought the ponytail, after all the braids and hairpieces, sounded . . . if not good, preferable.

  “No, indeed, so let’
s you and me give the powers that be another little show, shall we?”

  “Okay,” I responded briskly, “let’s get in there and kick some—” Pat looked at me and I smiled too broadly. “Fuck me twice and cover me with applesauce!”

  We strolled onto the set, Pat looking clear-eyed and straight-backed with her silver hair and bright blue eyes, me looking as if all I needed was a dirndl, a goat, and clogs to be ready to take my place in The Sound of Music. We arrived at a small troop of traveling minstrels—no, I’m kidding. I wish we’d arrived at a small troop of traveling anything, instead of this group of three: the first assistant director David Tomblin, the producer Gary Kurtz, who might’ve been smiling under his usual fashion choice, a bearded straight face, and George.

  “Well . . .” George practically said. Dave Tomblin spoke for the entire group when he repeated the same thing he’d said after at least six previous hair don’ts: “I think this one is quite . . .”

  “. . . Flattering!” Gary finished.

  “What do you think of it?” George asked me.

  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!”

  • • •

  it was also around then that I became uncontrollably enamored of a makeup enhancement that shames me even today: lip gloss. I had so much lip gloss on you might have slid off and broken your own lips if you tried to kiss me. I’ve never really understood what lip gloss is meant to enhance. Is that how much spit I leave on there when I lick my lips? Even if I was licking my lips in some come-hither way, that still wouldn’t account for that slap of sticky shine. No tongue is that wet, or if it was, it would have to be the tongue of a buffalo—or my dog, Gary, who has a tongue the size of two city blocks, enabling him, if he so chooses, to lick his eyes. But if you got all of Gary’s horrific long strands of spit slathered onto my—or some other unlucky lass’s—lips, I doubt it would provide me with that come-hither look. It would give me more of a come-slather look.

  Giving Leia that high-shine look would make Vader afraid he might slip on her lip gloss and fall on his breathing machine. And who wears that much lip gloss into battle? Me, or Leia, of course.

  The late actress Joan Hackett was a much older friend who taught me many of the things my mother wisely or unwisely failed to, including a love for, and thus the philosophy behind, lip gloss. I’ve since seen Joan in a movie that takes place in the old West, and in it, she is wearing enough gloss to wax a car, and it works on her, mostly—it really does. But in the final analysis I’ve learned that space battle and lip gloss don’t mix.

  • • •

  i don’t remember much about things like the order we shot scenes in or who I got to know well first. Nor did anyone mention that one day I would be called upon to remember any of this long-ago experience. That one day soon, and then for all the days after that, information about Star Wars would be considered desirable in the extreme. That there would be an insatiable appetite for it, as if it were food in a worldwide famine.

  Everywhere I looked, things were new. British crew: new. The way I was treated: new. The feeling that so many things were possible it was difficult to name them, or focus on them, for long: very new.

  I read the dialogue and it was impossible. On my first day I had a scene with Peter Cushing, who played Governor Tarkin. This is the scene when I was supposed to say, “I thought I recognized your foul stench when I arrived on board.” Who talks like that, except maybe a pirate in the seventeenth century? I looked at it and thought it should be said more 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!” So I did it like that, more sardonic than emotional. Fearless and like an actual human, but not serious. Ironic. Some chick from Long Island who’s not scared of you or anyone you might know.

  And this was when George gave me the only direction that I ever received from him other than his usual suggestion to make everything you’re saying “faster” or “more intense.” He took me aside and in a very solemn voice told me, “This is a very big deal for Leia. Huge. I mean, her planet is about to get blown up by these guys. And that means everything that she knows is gonna be gone forever. So you’re very upset. She is very upset.”

  I listened carefully because I was the one with most of the earnest lines, and prior to this I didn’t know whether I was going to have to deliver them earnestly. When you watch the movie, it turns out that the voice I used when I was upset was vaguely British, and my not-upset voice is less British.

  • • •

  because I grimaced each time one of the blanks noisily exited my laser gun, I had to take shooting lessons from the policeman who prepared Robert De Niro for his terrifying, psychotic role in Taxi Driver. Actually, it wouldn’t become a laser gun until post-production. Thus the expression “We’ll fix it in post.” (I wanted to be fixed in post, but this wouldn’t become possible until the birth of collagen injections in Poland in the early eighties. As far as I know there have been no Polish jokes in conjunction with this important discovery. Perhaps this is because looking younger is no joking matter or because something that expensive generally isn’t considered all that amusing unless it’s injected into the lips—and then it’s so painful, it makes a bikini wax something you reflect upon longingly and with shorter hair. I do know that women have to look younger longer—in part due to the fact that cragginess doesn’t enhance most women’s overall appearance, and in part because I don’t know that many straight men whose goal is to achieve a kind of dewy teenage appearance. But maybe I don’t get around enough.)

  • • •

  there was one other woman on the movie besides Pat McDermott and the continuity “girl,” and that was Kay Freeborn. Kay was married to Stuart Freeborn and they had a son, Graham. All of them worked on the movie doing makeup. Stuart had been doing makeup since the silent films, where a lot of makeup was required, since you couldn’t hear the dialogue and how you looked was everything. He appeared to me to be about eighty, so he was probably about fifty-five or sixty. He would tell stories while applying your makeup, while the heat of the larger-than-usual lights warmed you. Kay was largely in charge of my makeup, of course, seeing as we were both women—and in an all-male space-fantasy world, we women had to stick together. But Stuart was also known to do mine on occasion.

  Stuart seemed to always have a smile on his face (where else would he have a smile?) while he powdered you down and up. “I remember I was doing Vivien Leigh’s makeup for Fire Over England, which starred herself and her future husband, Laurence Olivier. They had fallen in love while starring in the picture together—but both of them were still married to other people, so they could only really see one another on the sly or they’d get caught, you know. And there was I—a young man myself then—hard to believe now, I know.”

  I’d interject here, “No! You look incredible!”

  He’d laugh gratefully and continue his story. “Well, you’re a nice girl,” he’d say, smoothing rouge on my cheek with one of his many sponges.

  “No! I’m not! I’m not nice! Ask anyone—they’ll tell you!”

  “So there I’d be, working on Miss Leigh’s lipstick for nigh on two hours—for the film was being shot in Technicolor and the lips had to be very red but the skin slightly gray.”

  I grimaced. “Gray?!”

  Stuart laughed as he moved to my other cheek. “’Twas to do with the four-step color process of Technicolor. They don’t use it these days—too complicated.” My eyebrows were next to receive his cinematic enhancement. “So there I am. It took me all of two hours to do Miss Leigh’s lips just right, and don’t you know, I’m just about finished and there she is,
camera ready, and who comes in but his lordship. Only he wasn’t his lordship then, of course, he was just that new actor Larry Olivier. Most called him Larry then—but to strangers or fans he was Laurence Olivier, up-and-coming star-to-be. Whatever you called him, though, he came and swooped down, kissing her then and there. All my work—hours of it, like I told you—out the window, and nothing for it but to start all over again.”

  He shrugged. “Nothin’ to be done about it. They were in love and that’s all there was to it. You’re only young once, so they tell me. Shame, but there it is.”

  carrison

  I’ve spent so many years not telling the story of Harrison and me having an affair on the first Star Wars movie that it’s difficult to know exactly how to tell it now. I suppose I’m writing this because it’s forty years later and whoever we were then—superficially at least—we no longer are now. Whoever I might’ve infuriated then wouldn’t have the energy to be infuriated now. And even if they did, I wouldn’t have the energy to feel as guilty as I would have thirty or twenty or—well, there’s no way I could’ve written it even ten years ago.

  There’s not much in my life that I’ve kept secret. Many would argue there are certain otherwise-private stories I might’ve been wiser to keep closer to the vest. That vest that knows no proximity.

  But Carrison is something I’ve only vaguely alluded to in the past forty years. Why? Why not blather on about this like I’ve blathered on about everything else? Was it the one thing I wanted to know all by myself—well, me and Harrison? I can only speculate. Anyway there are rules about kissing and telling, aren’t there? I’d like to think those only apply to men. And Harrison’s been very good about not talking about his half of the story. But just because he’s been good doesn’t mean that I have to continue to be. Mum is the word for just so long and then it has to go back to being a British parent.