Carrie Fisher Initially Feared Star Wars Would Signal The Death Of Her Career

Though she’s become synonymous with the role of General Leia Organa and Star Wars, in general, Carrie Fisher wasn’t always convinced by Lucasfilm’s space opera. As a matter of fact, there was a time when Fisher feared that A New Hope would signal the death of her career.

As revealed in Todd Fisher’s heartfelt memoir, My Girls, the young actress was convinced that her first major blockbuster would flop spectacularly, sending dreams of a life-long Hollywood career up in smokes. Much of that apprehension can be traced back to Lucasfilm’s lengthy post-production process, and because Star Wars was such an effects-heavy movie – a fact that still rings true to this day – Carrie Fisher and her co-stars had no idea what to expect when the lights went down in ’77.

Said Todd Fisher:

So we’re sitting in the parking lot waiting to go into the screening. Now, this is the first time anybody’s seen anything. This is days before it comes out to the theaters. She’s smoking, chain-smoking, drinking — Coca-Cola in one hand, cigarette in the other hand. She just doesn’t want to go, and I’m like, ‘You know we’ve got to go in.’ I’m sitting there watching the lights go down, you know — literally, doors are closing. ‘We’ve got to go now.’ So I finally get her to put her cigarette out. By this point, there’s nowhere to sit except the front row. So we sit in the front row and it starts, and we watch those titles go by and then the battlecruiser flies over and I looked over, and I had her hand, she was squeezing my hand, panicked. I said, ‘This is no B movie.’

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, it’s incredible to think that Star Wars, which is now one of the biggest names in entertainment, emerged from a cloud of doubt – on Carrie Fisher’s part, at least. A New Hope scored $775M worldwide – against a budget of just $11M, no less – and became a global phenomenon. And the rest is history.

Alas, due to Carrie Fisher’s untimely death, the fate of Leia remains somewhat uncertain. Her Resistance leader was still alive by the time the credits rolled on The Last Jedi though, placing the onus on J.J. Abrams now to deliver a fitting conclusion during Star Wars: Episode IX.