When Mark Hamill heard the news of Carrie Fisher’s death on December 27th, he tweeted ‘no words #Devastated’. Now he has found the words, and they are truly beautiful.

In a guest column for the Hollywood Reporter, Hamill wrote about their being in Star Wars together – ‘it was like we were in a garage band together that somehow hit it huge’ – and described Carrie as ‘something completely different’, who he ‘was just in awe of.’

Hamill described their first meeting, which was at dinner in London when she was 19 and he was 24, before shooting Star Wars: ‘I was thinking, “Oh my God, it’ll be like working with a high school kid.” But I was just bowled over. I mean she was just so instantly ingratiating and funny and outspoken. She had a way of just being so brutally candid.

‘She was telling me stuff about her stepfather, about her mom, about Eddie Fisher — it was just harrowing in its detail. I kept thinking, “Should I know this?” I mean, I wouldn’t have shared that with somebody that I had trusted for years and years and years. But she was the opposite. She just sucked you into her world.’

He described her sense of humour while shooting the trilogy: ‘She was so committed to joy and fun and embracing life… I would do crazy things to amuse her on the set. Making her laugh was always a badge of honor.’ This included once wearing her white Princess Leia jumpsuit and walking around the back lot in it.

Hamill lastly talked about their friendship in later life: ‘I’m grateful that we stayed friends and got to have this second act with the new movies. I think it was reassuring to her that I was there, the same person, that she could trust me, as critical as we could sometimes be with each other. We ran the gamut over the years, where we were in love with each other, where we hated each other’s guts. “I’m not speaking to you, you’re such a judgmental, royal brat!” We went through it all. It’s like we were a family.

‘She was able to make you feel like you were the most important thing in her life. I think that’s a really rare quality… She was high maintenance. But my life would have been so much drabber and less interesting if she hadn’t been the friend that she was.’

 

Via The Hollywood Reporter