Carrie Fisher HARDtalk

we're replaying an interview she gave to Hardtalk 16 years ago.

In the words of my guest, she had the classic Hollywood

upbringing in a beautiful, but broken home.

There followed a star role in Star Wars, and the obligatory

going off the rails with drugs and divorce.

Now she says she's a single parent with a dysfunctional

family all of her own.

How is she now?

Carrie Fisher, a very warm welcome to the programme.

And welcome to London.

Thank you.

You used to say that you would move here.

I would love to live here, but I have to get clearance

from my ex, because we share custody with my daughter.

You know.

So I would not want to take my daughter away from her father.

I grew up without a father, so...

Listening to those words which you said of yourself in a BBC

documentary a short time ago, it sounds as though

you can almost stand

back from your life and look at it as an outsider.

Well, it's much better to stand back from it than to find yourself

in the middle of it all the time.

From bits of my life, you know, it's better to stand back from it.

The obligatory going off the rails, did you say?

Yes, your words.

Yes, I've done that a couple of times.

But I've done non-obligatory things as well.

Does the fact that you played Princess Leia in Star Wars,

does that still follow you around?

I guess so, you just brought it up.

People stop you in airports and in the street?

They'll sometimes even call me Princess Leia,

which, you want to say, "How dumb do I look?"

But you wouldn't want to hear the answer to that.

They will say Princess Leia, like I'll go "Yeah?

Oh".

Do you like it?

It's all right.

If I didn't like it, it would set me up for a bad life,

so yeah, it's nice and it's nice for kids.

It's nice for my kid.

When you were 19, you said you didn't know how to be famous.

Did I say that?

I certainly had a better idea than most people,

given that I'd watched my parents as closely as I could.

Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher.

I think that's who they are.

Oh, no, is it them?

How awful!

I mean, they bred and had children...

Oh, no.

Wait till I tell my brother.

I didn't know.

I don't think you ever know how to be famous.

There's no sort of school that prepares you for it.

It's different in any era.

And when you could go to any toy store in the land and see

plastic dolls of you, what does that do to someone at the age of 19?

It was very pleasant.

It's very pleasant now I'm a Pez dispenser.

I couldn't be more proud to see my head flip back and a thing

come out of my neck.

They don't have to get permission from me to do these things.

Does the money...

I don't get money!

I signed my likeness away, which is quite

a vampiric thing to do.

But you got quite a bit of money out

of the Star Wars trilogy.

Yeah, but none of it's left now, so I have to make a living writing.

But yes, I did.

I have no reason to complain about anything, except these shoes.

They look all right to me.

There were tours.

They must have been enormous fun, going out on tour, doing

the press tours and running off to the amusement parks.

It was fun.

I mean, I'm someone that comes away with hideous anecdotes

about Harrison and Mark.

Oh, do share them.

Oh, yes, I will.

As soon as we go off, I'll tell you.

What was hideous about them?

We grew up together.

We became famous together. So...

You get tired of talking about it.

We were sort of launched into the public eye at the same time.

So the difficulty was, I thought Harrison did so well.

I was 20 and he was 33 or 34 when the film came out,

and Harrison was really good doing interviews.

He'd taken philosophy in college, so he would quote philosophers

liberally in his interviews.

I wanted to do that, so when I got back from the junket,

I got tutored in philosophy so that I could quote philosophers

when referring to Harrison.

You had a huge crush on him.

I did.

Well, I started a trend, didn't I?

Unrequited? I hope so.

Would I tell you if it wasn't?

Look at him, does it look like he would have a crush on me?

How hideous were these things that you went through with him?

Nothing was really hideous.

Really, I was post-adolescence, so, you know, my

emotional world was much

more raw than anybody else's.

It still is.

Sounds as though you had a lot of fun.

We did.

You were amazed at the lines.

We used to drive by and look at them and...

And think "How did we ever get to be so famous?"

Yes.

I don't know how you can ask that question.

It was just so surreal.

I was quite used to surreal anyway, though.

What's the legacy of Star Wars for you, do you think?

Oh, I get to have a very young mother that I haven't

had since I was very young, so that's nice.

I have no idea.

My daughter carries around a folder of Princess Leia,

and it follows me around for ever.

That hair, weird clothes, no brassieres.

I mean, I don't know.

It would be very difficult to encapsulate what it all was.

They thought at seven stone that you were too heavy, didn't they?

Mmm-hmm.

Must have been a shock.

No, I always thought I was too heavy, though.

I mean, I had that thing where I looked in the mirror

and saw this giant.

Bowl of oatmeal with features, I used to call my face.

So I completely agreed with them.

I was too heavy.

Stardom came at about the age of two hours for you, didn't it?

I don't have a clear memory of that, but they tell me.

This was Life magazine.

Well, you know, the Africans believe that

when you're photographed, it steals your soul.

So by that reckoning, I never had one.

Maybe I'll get it back through the same process.

What were the assumptions made about who you were going to be

because your parents were Debbie Reynolds

and Eddie Fisher?

Well, it was assumed that I would go into show

business and that I would go

into nightclub work, which I did in this country.

I dropped out of school, but please don't tell my daughter.

But I didn't drop out.

There wasn't a thud, it was more of a slide.

I sort of dropped subjects, like littering a trail at the school

where I'd been with subjects.

The last to drop was English.

But then I went to drama college in this country,

so I had a smattering of education, I suppose.

First of all, you were with your mother in her

nightclub acts in Vegas.

What was that like?

Well, you know, the difficulty about that stuff is,

what you want to do as a child, what I wanted to do and I gather

from a lot of people is, you want to fit in.

And that did not

enable me to fit in, that I was doing nightclub

work on my holidays, as opposed to skiing and stuff.

So it made me different.

And also, doing nightclub work in front of audiences,

if I made any mistake, I would just beat myself

up, horrible pounding.

But it made you fit in with your mother's world, didn't it?

Yeah, but my mother's world was a quarter of a

century older than me.

So yes, it did make me fit into that, but I was just lost in

between all the worlds.

I was decidedly without a generation.

And is that when therapy started, feeling that

you were without a generation?

No.

Absolutely not, that would be way too indulgent.

Therapy started when I was 15.

I'm manic-depressive, so that's when manic

depression onsets.

My mom was going through a bad period and I needed to talk

to an adult, so I went to therapy.

I was not diagnosed as manic-depressive until I got

to a proper psychiatrist, which was when I was 24.

How aware were you of your mother's unhappiness?

She said she never had any taste for men, she always

chose the wrong men

and she blamed herself for that.

Oh, the bad taste.

I was aware of my mother's bad taste at 15, 14.

Yeah, 14, she told me that the latest husband

was cheating on her, had spent all her money.

She told me that when I was 14.

That was astonishing.

That was a lot to lay on you.

Well, I remember she said "I can tell you because

you're the strong one,

and your brother is the open wound".

And I thought "No, you've completely got that wrong".

Yes, it was a lot.

But you know what, at the end of the day, I was the strong one.

I mean, perhaps my strength was based out of my weakness,

but we do grow into those roles that our parents assign us.

Never much of a relationship with your father.

He left at the age of two, but you haven't

spoken to him in years.

No, I have spoken to him in years.

I've stopped speaking to him now. Hmm.

But I didn't see him growing up much.

But I was completely in love with my father.

He had this great voice.

He was charming.

So it's very painful that I...

I didn't have a proper father-daughter relationship with

him.

He wasn't somebody I would go to in trouble.

Quite the opposite, he would come to me when he was in trouble.

For a long time, though, you were estranged from him.

No, I wasn't.

Now I am, because he's written this book and I...

You know, the book, I think, is quite embarrassing.

Embarrassing or hurtful, to you and your mother?

Both.

I mean, to have one's parent discussing the sex life...

It's in such bad taste.

It's just not done.

You feel embarrassed about it?

Well, I was hurt because I said "Don't do it, don't say

this stuff", and he did.

I said "If you do it, I'm not going to be able to speak to you".

So he knew what he was risking.

None of his children speak to him right now.

You said you didn't have much confidence in your acting

abilities early on.

I don't think I was a confidence maven.

That wasn't really my middle name.

I was confidence in my...confident in my verbal acuity.

It's interesting to make a mistake verbally when you say that.

But I wasn't confident as an actor.

I was confident as a personality, and if my personality

fitted into a role I was playing, then fine.

I didn't like how I looked, so I didn't like seeing myself

on screen or even imagining how I would look.

But if I could keep away from that idea, then it was all right.

People have talked about the drugs and you've talked about the drugs

that were used on the set of Star Wars.

No.

I've never talked about the drugs that were used

on the set of Star Wars.

Some guy who wrote a book about Star Wars who never knew any

of us or spoke to any of us...

No.

That would also make George a moron, that we were all doing drugs

on the set of Star Wars.

Certainly, I did drugs when I was younger, but I don't

recall doing them in the Death Star.

Tell me about a nice evening you had with Eric Idle once,

and the Rolling Stones.

Well, I wrote that one down.

That was not on the Death Star, though.

We drank.

We drank, I called it Tunisian Table Cleaner,

because he'd done Life Of Brian, and Harrison and I got

very drunk with Eric and then we went straight to work.

So we were still inebriated on the set.

This was something he'd brought back from Tunisia.

Yeah, they were given to the extras to get them to be compliant.

So somehow, it sets you up.

It's the only scene in the three films where we're smiling.

And Eric is kind of pleased...

He's very pleased, as he should be.

The Rolling Stones were there that night as well.

I think they were there earlier on.

That was what Eric used to do.

I was renting his house, and yet he'd come in and stay there,

and I would hear noises downstairs and I'd have a 5.30 call

and I'd go downstairs, and all of the Rolling Stones

would be there.

At that point, one didn't want to go to sleep.

What was it like, occasions like that?

It was great.

What do you remember about them?

I remember that Charlie Watts didn't have a lot of facial expressions.

Ron Wood was very nice.

You meet really interesting, great people.

And I met them quite early on.

I felt a bit out of my league, certainly, but I was willing to try.

And Mick Jagger?

Very nice.

I've spent more time with him lately, and he's very nice.

You married Paul Simon.

Did I?

Oh, my God, why didn't you tell me?

What happened?

How did it turn out?

How did it turn out?

Oh, I guess I'm not with him any more.

Fine.

I get along well with all my exes.

Was marriage the wrong thing to do?

Yes.

Why?

Because if you look at me, at the most, you would think I'm

an interesting girlfriend, but a wife?

I think you're going to be disappointed if you're looking

across at me at a breakfast table and I made the eggs.

Why?

Well, I'm actually good at making scrambled eggs.

So why would a man be disappointed?

Why make that assumption?

My role models for marriage are bad on both sides.

My parents have been married seven or eight times between them.

So I didn't have a lot of faith in the...

You know, marital vows, I guess.

But Paul and I were a good idea in an area.

We were both very verbal and we both had a very odd relationship

with the English language.

In what way?

Cadences, constant use of puns, bizarre.

They used to call it the secret handshake of shared sensibility.

So you had fun together.

We had everything together.

It was an actual relationship.

Fun was one of the things we had.

We also had a hard time at other times.

And Brian Lourd, the father of Billie.

He's arrived here in London today.

So we'll all be out this evening.

I get along extremely well with him.

I get on well with both of them.

Why didn't that one work?

Well, he's gay.

You didn't know that?

He forgot to mention it.

Didn't come up.

So to speak!

No, I did not know that.

How much did that hurt?

Well, it was awful.

It was awful.

All of these...

relationships dissolving, whatever

the reason, is unpleasant.

That's just another betrayal.

It's a difficult one, but I don't think any betrayals are easy.

Sounds in a way as if you've almost lived life on a tightrope,

and things knock you off from time to time and you've

turned to drugs...

I think you called them your islands of relief at one point.

Well, it is so that I'm manic depressive.

It is so that 60% of all manic depressives self-medicate,

either with alcohol or drugs.

It is so that I've ended up in a mental hospital,

which is not de rigueur.

This is not what people conventionally do in Hollywood.

And that was not because of drugs, that was because I had

a psychotic manic episode due to manic depression.

I would probably have been a drug addict in any event.

But it certainly gave me a real edge to be a drug addict,

given my chemical imbalance, bipolar, manic-depressive,

whatever you want to call it.

Have you come close to killing yourself?

I've thought about it, but not really, no.

I thought about it.

It was very unpleasant.

And when I ended up in the hospital, I lost my mind.

How do you mean?

I had a psychotic break, which means you feel this

horrible thing coming.

You have no idea what it is.

A sense of impending doom?

It's beyond doom.

You feel you're dying.

I was trying to think...

could I outlast my death,

was a thought I had.

I thought if I fell asleep I would die and if I

stayed awake, I would die.

I stayed awake for six days, and I ended up in lock-up.

Losing your mind is truly horrible.

Once it's gone, it's fine.

How do you get it back?

Time.

And a very hard programme of rehabilitation.

Well, I was an outpatient in a mental hospital for five months.

You know, I had therapy.

I hardly need therapy any more.

It's been 28 years that I've been in therapy.

But I like it, like getting my teeth cleaned.

I should probably do that a bit more.

But I'm on medication now for manic depression.

And you know what they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

What about what kills you?

Because that killed me.

I think you said it didn't make you stronger, it showed up how weak

and vulnerable you were.

No, I'm stronger now, forget all that.

You've been through that.

No, what it taught me was the difference between a problem

and an inconvenience, and I have not had that many

problems in my life, I've been very lucky that way.

But that mental hospital thing was a problem.

Another time, I had a problem was when I thought Billie had asthma

and we had to go to the hospital.

I thought she was going to die, so that was a problem.

A big one.

Yeah.

Postcards From The Edge.

Did that make you look at your life in a different way?

You know, no.

An actress coming back from rehabilitation,

trying to claw back her life?

I always seem to be coming back from something.

You know?

No, that, now, is 13 years ago, lucky 13.

All of it makes me look at my life, and I'm awfully tired

of looking at my life.

It's true, I'd rather live it than look at it all the time.

So you're spending more time living it these days.

Yeah, well, I'd rather lead a life than follow one around.

Is that how it felt for a long time?

Oh, yeah.

I was driven and I didn't know who was driving.

And now you do.

You're finally back in the driving seat?

Yes, but given that that was

possible, the thing that happened in the hospital where I didn't sleep

for six days, it's not a distinct possibility,

but it is a possibility for me, so I know what the odds are now.

So I actually have a good time pretty much all the time now.

You're very, very happy, you've described yourself.

I'm like a Hallmark card.

I go skipping down the street.

It's just ill-making.

Are you still acting?

Right now, I am.

Didn't you notice?

I mean outside the studio.

Yes, I still act once a day, to keep my Sag dues alive.

But writing is really your passion.

But it's gone from inclination to obligation now.

A lot of things have, yes.

Does it feel like hard work?

The hard work was what I did in the hospital.

Everything I do now is not a problem.

Tell me about Those Old Broads.

Oh, they're going to make that.

You've written the screenplay.

They're going to make it as a television movie

with my mother, with Elizabeth Taylor.

Shirley MacLaine.

I think so, yeah.

In terms of making a feature, Shirley says it's like ageism

and stuff, you know.

Hollywood do more films about younger people.

How is your mother these days?

My mother is fantastic.

She's fantastic.

Looks fantastic.

It's her birthday tomorrow.

I sent her a silver picture frame from here.

That's what she collects.

And you're still very loyal to her, aren't you?

I love my mother.

You're a good child.

You're a loyal child.

I'm a good child, my daughter's a good child.

We're just sickening.

No, we're a matriarchy.

My mother and my daughter get along very well.

My daughter's taking tap dancing now.

You know what Jung said?

What does a grandmother and a granddaughter,

or a grandparent and a grandchild have in common?

What?

They share a common enemy.

Carrie Fisher, it's been a pleasure having you on the programme.

Thank you very much.