The Princess Diarist

In The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher looks back on the legacy of her most famous role shortly after reprising Princess Leia in The Force Awakens. Both funny and thoughtful, Fisher's writing continues to entertain and demonstrate why the woman behind the character remains significant. Fisher's largest revelation focuses on her affair with Harrison Ford, which she frames against being young in Hollywood. The middle of her book, and the largest section, reprints excerpts from the diary she kept while working on Star Wars. Fisher's passing shortly after the release of this book makes many of the passages all the more poignant. When she examines her legacy or how she thinks she'll be remembered, it's hard not to feel a tug at one's show more heartstrings. As her final written work, The Princess Diarist offers enjoyable proof that Fisher's legacy is secure. show less

Fisher's sass is in full effect as she describes her time auditioning for and filming the first Star Wars movie. From a brief affair with Harrison Ford to attending comic cons to make money later in life, she is sincere and sarcastic in equal measures. I enjoyed it, but it also felt forgettable.

“If you look at the person someone chooses to have a relationship with, you’ll see what they think of themselves.”

“I’m a hick,” I recall saying to him. “No,” Harrison answered. “You think you’re less than you are. You’re a smart hick.” And then, “You have the eyes of a doe and the balls of a samurai.”

In 1977 when Star Wars IV: A New Hope came out my husband and I were in our mid-twenties. We loved the movie but not as much as the youth we were working with. The teens bragged about how many times they had seen the movie. The movie was more than a hit, it transformed culture.

Fast forward ten or more years, and our son was sick and restless. I brought out the Star Wars trilogy VCR tapes to entertain him. After viewing the first movie, he told me, "Thank you."

The movie is a touchstone for so many who remember when they first saw it as vividly as recalling where we were on 9-11 or the day President Kennedy was shot.

Princess Leia was a different kind of heroine, the kind I had found lacking when I was growing up in the 1950s. In my show more make-believe play I was always a cowboy because the cowgirls were weak and needed to be rescued. I resented it when Leia was turned into a sex object, barely dressed in that uncomfortable metal bikini.

Later, we were into Joseph Campbell and loved how the story of Luke Skywalker was a secular manifestation of the eternal hero myth.

We were fans of all the Harrison Ford movies-- from Indiana Jones to Witness. But I never idolized Mark Harmon or Harrison Ford or Carrie Fisher like many did, or do. Over the years I read about Carrie's books and saw her in a few movies and heard about her personal battles. I'm not really a Hollywood bio book fan, so I did not pay much attention to The Princess Diarist until I read such glowing reviews.

I had requested The Princess Diarist through NetGalley before Carrie's death, based on the reviews I had read. Just last week I was notified that I was granted access to the book.

I always give a new book a glance. Sometimes, I keep reading, hooked. This was one of those times. I read the book in a few sittings.

"...if I didn't write about it someone else would." from The Princess Diarist

Earlier this year on my blog I shared memories of my teen years, drawing from the diaries I kept beginning at age 13. Carrie started writing at age 12, about the time I did. I found myself relating to the Carrie. At age nineteen, she was self-deprecating, uncertain, wanting to appear wordily yet wanting to be loved. How secure could a teenager be when the first thing she is told is to lose ten pounds before filming!

The memoir begins with Carrie retelling her back story, getting the role, and how her affair with Harrison Ford began. Her writing is direct with a touch of humor, and an objectivity made possible by the passing of time. Carrie admits she went into filming hoping to have an affair; there was one boyfriend in her past. Harrison was fifteen years older, and married, and not on her radar although he struck her as the iconic Hollywood star. He made her nervous and left her feeling awkward.

The next section is from the diary she kept during the filming of Star Wars: IV. The diary excerpts offer insight into her nineteen-year-old mind. It is quite heartbreaking and poignant, consisting of poems and thoughts reflecting hard lessons about love. She chose to be with Harrison, but chastised herself for choosing obsession and over emotional investment. There was no future with Harrison, their relationship without real meaning.

Teenage Carrie had great self-awareness about her choices but lacked an ability for self-determination. She has little confidence and feels worthless. She is playing at being someone she is not, and is unable to demand what she needs from the relationship. Harrison has strong boundaries, revealing little; the strong, silent type. Writing keeps Carrie together. When filming on location came to an end, Harrison returned to his family.

Forty years on, Carrie can reflect on her "very long one-night stand" and their one-sided love affair objectively. It's all in the past, she remarks, "and who gives a shit?"

The memoir next shifts to how the Princess Leia role took over Carrie's life and how she coped with the fame and demands it brought: being accessible to fans and signing autographs, listening to the stories of worship, making money off the fans, the endless Comic-Con conventions. Carrie grows old, but Princess Leia does not, and a young fan complained, "I want the other Leia, not the old one." But fans also shared stories that warmed her heart and made her feel good.

I loved the story of people asking her, "Well, you wanted to be in show business," so accept the negative side of fame. That lack of empathy riled me. I was asked a similar question once. I complained about the frequent moves and lack of self-determination that came with my husband being in the pastoral ministry. "You married a minister. You knew what you were getting into," the lady told me. "I was nineteen and had no idea about itineracy," I retorted.

We make decisions at age nineteen feeling very grown up and worldly, and then realize how little we understand about the world, or about ourselves. Carrie didn't set out to become a famous Hollywood actress. And she was not prepared.

Last of all, Carrie ruminates, sobbing, on her iconic role. What would she be if not Princess Leia? "Just me."

Find Carrie Fisher's website here.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review. show less

Listening to this audiobook -- wonderfully narrated by Carrie Fisher herself -- was a very surreal experience for me. I started listening to it just a few days before the news came out that she'd had a heart attack during a plane flight. I finished listening to it a week after her death.

This was the first of Carrie Fisher's books I'd ever read, and I found it to be a very bittersweet experience. I wish I had appreciated her more when she was alive, because I don't think I'd ever realized that she was this funny in her recollections and her openness about herself and her life. It is at times heartbreaking to listen to in context now -- like the moment when she muses that autographed pictures of her will be worth a lot more after her show more death -- but it's also reassuring that, even though she's gone, I was still able to listen to her stories and opinions for the first time. I adored the way she writes, too, which is especially good in audiobook form because sometimes it really feels like you're having a conversation with her.

Despite my sadness at Carrie Fisher's death, I'm glad I got to listen to this book at the moment in time that I did. show less

The Princess Diarist is Carrie Fisher’s memoir of the early days of the Star Wars phenomenon, her relationship with Harrison Ford, and dealing with fame. She kept diaries during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, when she was relatively unknown and unsure of whether she wanted to be an actress. The diaries are reflective of a nineteen-year-old young woman, full of idealism and insecurities. Her style is colloquial and candid, with a good dose of self-deprecating and sarcastic humor. Some of the most poignant writing is painful to read, as she sorts through feelings of guilt and uncertainty in an affair with an emotionally distant married man. Veiled by glib humor, this book provides insight into the heart of a naïve young show more woman seen from the perspective of her older self.

It is touted as a “recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time,” but unfortunately, these behind-the-scenes insights are few in number. It is more focused on her feelings, self-doubts, and romantic involvement with her co-star. Near the end of the book, she provides a glimpse into what it is like to constantly be compared to her younger self and how she handles interactions with her fans. She provides a rather unpleasant picture of the nature of celebrity, with its emphasis on physical beauty, which inevitably fades, leaving the actress to cope with declining popularity and corresponding disappointment. Several passages refer to a time after she passes and the legacy she would leave, being forever connected with Princess Leia, which is particularly bittersweet in view of her death shortly after this book was published. This book engenders sympathy for her due to how unhappy she seemed to be. It will be appreciated by Carrie Fisher’s fans, but it is more about her emotional state-of-mind than about the movies she made. show less

I’ve read a few books in the past by Carrie Fisher, and have always been astounded that she managed to take what was a very interesting (but fraught) life and channel it into an interestingly written perspective on the world. This book was really no different, and presented a thoughtful introspective on her time as the newly minted Princess Leia and the unexpected fame that came with it. Even though the first film (and subsequent saga) catapulted her to the heights of Hollywood royalty, Fisher makes it clear that from her perspective she was not expecting anything more than to make what she refers to as a “cool little movie set in space.” The material may have been intriguing and highly entertaining, but the expectation of a show more massive hit was not an expectation at all - the focus for Fisher and her costars was just getting into the acting world and gaining experience (and having a little bit of fun in the meantime). The central portion of the book is actually a reproduction of the diaries that Fisher kept during her time on set in London, which provides an interesting break in reading and analyzing her post-Star Wars thoughts. The currency of her youthful words is a bit astounding at times, since she seems to have some idea of the weight of fame (and the world) even though she denies as an older woman that she had any idea at the time. Seeing her mother (and father) go through similar periods in their lives would have given her a certain amount of perspective, but it’s interesting to see her apply the same ideas to her current situation while denigrating her understanding at the same time. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess, and even if we can see it coming it’s not always easy to allay the inevitable. show less

The late, great Carrie Fisher reflects on her life as it's shaped by her most famous character, Princess Leia Organa. Fisher begins with growing up with her celebrity parents (and seeing their celebrity diminish) and not really wanting to go into acting. Nevertheless, she gets a part in the movie Shampoo and enrolls in London's Central School of Speech and Drama.

She tells the story of her Star Wars audition - which oddly enough was a 2-for-1 audition before George Lucas and Brian Depalma for both Star Wars and Carrie. What would the world be like if Carrie had played Carrie in Carrie? Her experience filming Star Wars which involved rising early to spend intimate hours with the hairdresser Pat to get the ridiculous buns. She also relates show more that she and Harrison Ford had a fling even though he is much older and was already married at the time.

Despite the title, the book is mostly memoir rather than actual diaries, but a segment of Fisher's diary is included at the time of her relationship with Ford, which she calls "Carrison." It was quite a jarring shift to move from the Fisher's recollections from 40-years later, filled with self-deprecating humor, to the raw emotion of her 19-year-old journals. Oddly, this portion is read on the audiobook by her daughter, Billie Lourd, perhaps to give a younger voice to the journals, or maybe they just wanted to make her deeply uncomfortable (and the listener by proxy) reading about her mother's sexual relations.

The later half of the book deals with life after Star Wars became a hit, starting with the whirlwind press junket Fisher, Ford, and Mark Hammil went on to promote their low-budge movie as it became an unprecedented phenomena. Fisher remains awed by fans' dedication to Leia and the weird interactions she has with them. She refers to participating in conventions where fans pay money and line up for autographs as "lap dances." And the text includes perhaps real or perhaps exaggerated conversations with fans. show less