Hamill ‘loved’ making Fisher laugh

Mark Hamill has written a tribute to Carrie Fisher, saying “I loved her and loved making her laugh”.

Writing in The Hollywood Reporter, he recalled her daring him to try on her Princess Leia jumpsuit on the Star Wars set, adding: “It was so tight I looked like a Vegas lounge singer.”

Fisher died aged 60 on 27 December after a cardiac arrest.

“I’m grateful that we stayed friends and got to have this second act with the new movies,” Hamill added.

The hugely popular Star Wars franchise features Hamill as Luke Skywalker and Fisher as his twin sister Leia.

They have both starred in 1977’s Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back (1980), Return of the Jedi (1983) and most recently in 2015’s The Force Awakens.

They also appeared together in upcoming sequel Episode VIII, which has finished filming and is out in December 2017. It is not yet known what plans film-makers had for her character in Episode IX.

They met when Fisher was aged 19 and Hamill was 24.

He said that even at their first meeting she was “brutally candid”, offering “harrowing detail” about her family life as well as being “funny and outspoken”.

‘Defence mechanism’

But he said that despite making her laugh being “a badge of honour”, their “crazy” antics were not really “crazy after all”.

“In a way, it was a defence mechanism for her,” he wrote.

“She was so off the wall, she could use it as protection. Part of what was so poignant about her was that she was vulnerable, that there was this glimmer of a little girl that was so appealing and it roused the protective nature in my personality.”

He concluded by adding that their friendship had its ups and downs, and that she was “a handful” and “high maintenance”.

“But my life would have been so much drabber and less interesting if she hadn’t been the friend that she was,” he added.

Fisher’s mother Debbie Reynolds, who starred opposite Gene Kelly in the 1952 musical Singin’ in the Rain, died a day after her daughter. Her son Todd Fisher said the stress of his sister’s death had been too much for her and in her last words, she had said she wanted to be with Carrie.

Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd said she has “no words” to express how much she will miss her mother and grandmother.

BBC