CARRIE FISHER ON STAR WARS

Of her screen test for Star Wars Carrie Fisher told journalist Robert Greenberger: "The dialogue for our screen test was even more complicated than that in Star Wars. The sentences were sooo long. You didn´t know what you were talking about, so finally you had to ask `George, in my motivation for this scene, you must tell me, what is a bantha? What am I actually saying?

Elsewhere she added: "I wanted to do the role of Princess Leia because I wanted to have real conversations with people with bubbles on their heads. I just wanted to be blasé about someone sitting across from me being a `small person´ or some strange looking person who was hired through the `Ugly Agency´. I love that there´s an agency in London called that. I can´t tell you how thrilled I was to be casually sitting around with these people as if they didn´t have hair-dryer heads and things like that. I wanted to sit next to Wookiees, which are tall, half-men, half-ape creatures with glowing eyes, and all kinds of robots."

Source: The unauthorized Star Wars compendium by Ted Edwards

Carrie Fisher was nineteen when she was cast as Princess Leia, and it took her a while to be sure Lucas wouldn´t change his mind.

"I always felt I had the most arch dialogue to say. In my first scene I had to say to Peter Cushing:`Oh, Governor Tarkin. I thought I recognized your foul stench when I came aboard.´ What I really
wanted to say, in effect, was: `OmiGod I came aboard and there was this smell, and of course it turns out to be you.´ That would´ve been closer to my personality. But George took me aside and said: `This is all very real and very serious.´ Right.

I´d have done anything I was told because I thought they´d figure out soon enough that they hadn´t hired someone attractive enough, and they´d fire me. When they hired me, they told me to lose ten pounds. At my height that´s like asking me to lose a leg. So I kept thinking I´d show up on the stage and they´d say: `Okay, tubby, we´re going to go with a thinner person who´s, you know, more sparkly than you.´But George wanted and hired strong personalities. He said that was his way to go. Between the three of us that was a lot of personality in one spaceship, in one galaxy. Harrison used to say:`You can type this stuff but you can´t say it.´ All the navigational stuff. I´d have to say: `I´ve
placed information vital to the survival of the rebellion in the memory system of this R2D2 so my father will know how to retrieve it.´ I mean, c´mon.

But I have an abruptness in my demeanor, and I suppose it fit. I always feel that George put me on whatever map I´m located on, so he can ask me to do pretty much what he wants. But don´t tell him that!"

Source: George Lucas - the creative impulse by Charles Champlin

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