Mark Interviews 1970+

Mark Hamill & Carrie Fisher To Tie Knot

It's hard to imagine two co-stars so different, and yet so right for each other.

She comes from a show business family. She's the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher - and was always surrounded by glamour and celebrities.

He was a Navy brat, living all over the world - a starry-eyed kid who never dreamed he'd one day be making a living as an actor.

And yet, in STAR WARS, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher project such smooth rapport and such natural chemistry as the mismatched Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia Organa that they even manage to draw attention away from the fabulous robots, spaceships and special effects in their few romantic moments on the screen.

And it's not just a great movie relationship. Mark and Carrie are making no secret of the fact that they're awfully fond of each other off screen, too... and that any day now, they might be telling the world that they're going to tie the knot!

"Carrie is the best thing I've ever seen," Mark gushes about her performance as the haughty Princess, but is obviously unable to avoid letting his real-life affection for her glimmer through. "The Princess is an incredible role. She's smart and witty. She puts the guys down with her sense of humor and isn't afraid to grab the gun. I'm dying to find out who gets the girl in the sequel!"

Actually, STAR WARS has been such a rousing success that there are going to be two sequels - and while the plots haven't been finalized yet, it wouldn't surprise anyone if Luke and the Princess ultimately marry.

"Supposedly, the last one comes out in '83, when Luke Skywalker definitely will have crow's feet," Mark jokes. "I'll be limping around. My landspeeder will have training wheels."

Clearly, Mark is still reeling too much from the success of the first STAR WARS to think much about the new two parts of the trilogy. The movie has launched him on a very promising career at age 24, and has been so earthshattering that even he himself can't get over the new Mark Hamill.

"How has this changed my life?" he exclaims with a boyish grin. "I'm ordering $43 bottles of a champagne I can't even pronounce!"

But there's another way STAR WARS has changed Mark's life, a more important way. It's afforded him the chance to have close relationships with several people whom he might not have met otherwise, people he respects both personally and professionally - Harrison Ford, who plays Han Solo in the film ("Harrison is perfect!" Mark says. "Harrison, of all the humans, comes closest to stealing it!"), George Lucas, the film's director ("He gets so close to what he wants!")... And as for Carrie Fisher...?

Well, just the glint in Mark's eyes when her name is mentioned is enough to convince one that there's no one else Mark would rather be stuck filming a movie with in a Tunisian desert (exactly where much of STAR WARS was shot).

It's been a short, but sometimes difficult road that's led Mark and Carrie to each other. Mark's acting ambitions began when his father, a Navy Officer, brought him to New York and took him to several Broadway shows. "That's the first time I connected the fact that actors could actually go to work and get paid," Mark says.

His father was transferred to Japan, so Mark attended Yokohama High, then came back to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in college, with a major in theater arts. The parts began to come: a cameo on Bill Cosby's show, a role on the short-lived series The Texas Wheelers, nine months on the soap opera General Hospital, and the part of Linda Blair's boyfriend in the TV movie Sarah T.: Portrait of a Teenage Alcoholic.

As might be expected, though, real recognition didn't come until STAR WARS - and did it ever! "I wake up in the morning," says Mark, "and they're staring at me through the bedroom window.... If I move in the daytime, it will cause pandemonium." Annoying, yes... but it's a sign that Mark's made it - and he knows it.

Carrie's story is less like a teenage dream-come-true than Mark's, but it's equally inspiring. She made her film debut at age 17 in the movie Shampoo, in which she played Lee Grant's sassy, tennis-playing daughter. It was an auspicious debut, which immediately marked her as an actress to watch, but it hardly conferred instant stardom on her. She tried out for the film Carrie and got very close to landing the title role, but it was deemed that she wasn't quite right. (The part went to Sissy Spacek.)

And then came STAR WARS. Her winning portrayal of the independent and rebellious Princess defied all stenotypes; she wasn't the typical ingenuo and as a result she captured the affection of virtually everyone - especially the feminists. And so did the film, which has made cinematic history.

"I can't really think about failure," Carrie said months ago when it first became clear that STAR WARS, made at a budget of §9,6 million, would become one of the biggest bonanzas - critically and commercially - ever. "I can't think much about success, either." she added. "If I did, I'd probably go insane. After all, when you start your career by becoming a star in the most successful movie of all time, there's no place to go but down."

It's an exaggeration, but one can see her point - STAR WARS is something of a pinnacle for everyone involved with it. It all started as a seed in the mind of director George Lucas. "My main reason for making it," Lucas said, "was to give young people an honest, wholesome fantasy life, the kind my generation had. We had westerns, pirate movies, all kinds of great things. Now they have the Six Million Dollar Man and Kojak. Where are the romance, the adventure and the fun that used to be in practically every movie?"

The answer is simple: it's all in STAR WARS. The adventure is there in the intergalactic battles, which are breathtakingly effective. The romance is there, when the Princess, torn between her affections for Han Solo and Luke, is literally swept off her feet by the latter, who instantly becomes her hero.

The romance these two young stars brought to their scenes in STAR WARS has placed them at the threshold of exciting careers, which are just beginning to formalize. Mark will make Stingray (a film by the authors of The Sugarland Express), which he's very nervous about. "If I can't pull off a real interesting character kinda thing in that, it'll really blow my career away. It's like, 'Okay, what can he do without the special effects?'"

And there are the STAR WARS sequels. In them, Mark and Carrie will once again be tying the knot professionally. They will be "wed" in the show biz sense for many moons to come. And, as a result of tying the knot professionally, romance could enter their life on a private level, too. They're both young. Both talented. Both single. Both established well enough in their careers to take some time out for their personal needs. They could fall in love. They could actually delight the world by tying the knot in real-life as well as on the screen.

If it all sounds too fairy tale-ish, well, perhaps it might be. But show biz hasn't always been kind to Mark, who's found rapidly that you can't win everyone's favor, no matter how succesful you are.

"It made me feel really creepy," he said when he heard "a friend" had made an unkind comment about him. "It's not like high school anymore. You can't keep all your friends; not in this business."

Fortunately, Mark has learned, even at this early stage of his career, that in show business one goes through different stages, that there are good people and others who can hurt you.

How lucky he is then to have found Carrie Fisher. His personality might be wildly different from hers, but as the success of STAR WARS proves, they complement each other perfectly. And besides, they have the most important things in common - talent, intelligence, youthfulness and maturity. And, perhaps, someday even love.

May the Force be with them.

Movie Mirror, 1978