“I love you.”
“I know.”
Princess Leia Organa and smuggler Han Solo were galaxies apart, but the two characters were drawn to each other from the moment they met. Fans waited through six years and three movies for the two to finally end up together. And even though it seemed inevitable, we were on the edge of our seats, wondering if she would choose the rakish Solo or the honorable Luke Skywalker. (Of course, we eventually learned why that didn’t happen, but it’s neither here nor there.)
As it turns out, the pair’s palpable chemistry came from a very real place. Carrie Fisher has revealed (in her latest autobiographical book, The Princess Diarist) that she and Harrison Ford carried on a secret affair during the filming of Star Wars. She was just 19 at the time, while Ford was a 33-year-old married father of two small children.
I think we can all agree that teenagers, especially teenagers in love, make the absolute stupidest decisions of anyone on the planet. While carrying on with a much older married man was clearly a mistake; in this writer’s opinion, she bears much less blame than her paramour, simply because of her lack of maturity, experience, and wisdom.
Ford, for his part, has said in the past that he “was a terrible partner” to his first wife, Mary Marquardt. The two were married for 15 years, before divorcing in 1979. Whether she was aware of the affair at the time is unknown, but the illicit pair were almost caught by costar Mark Hamill. Fisher writes in her book:
“Once, on one of the rare occasions when we did have a sleepover at Harrison’s apartment, Mark dropped by unannounced. It was morning – clearly, I hadn’t just dropped by for brunch.”
Ford immediately took her hand and jokingly declared:
“We’re engaged.”
“It was hiding in plain sight, mocking the suggestion that there was anything going on – a technique I like to use to this day.”
Fisher also says that she doesn’t remember a great deal of details about the affair, thanks to her well-documented drug use at the time. Ford has yet to comment on the matter, and in fact, had only one word for Fisher when she contacted him for his blessing to include the story in her memoir. She says that he dryly quipped “Lawyer!” before dismissing the matter. “It was 40 years ago,” she adds, feeling that the time had finally come to stop keeping secrets.
Were you shocked by this revelation? Or did you feel like you’d known all along? Tell us your thoughts below!