When Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher partied with The Rolling Stones
Thanks to her timeless and quintessential role as Princess Leia in the George Lucas sci-fi opera epic, Star Wars, the dearly missed Carrie Fisher remains an undisputed cinematic icon. The actor first appeared in the cultural phenomenon franchise in 1977, in the first instalment titled A New Hope, alongside Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford, James Earl Jones and Alec Guinness.
The commercially successful film launched Fisher into global stardom and a passionate love affair that was kept a secret from the public. It remained concealed until 2016, when the surprising revelations from the actor’s memoir, The Princess Diarist, gave a detailed recounter of her affair with co-star Ford, who played her dashing yet rugged love interest, Han Solo.
Fisher and Ford began their affair when she was only 19 years old, and he was a 33-year-old married man. In Fisher’s memoir, she revealed that the affair started when the Indiana Jones star kissed her in the back of his car. Instead of pulling away, Fisher responded, and the rest is history.
The star wrote in her memoir that she began to wonder whether the kiss meant something or would be a one-time fling. However, the affair followed suit, with whispers and rumours about the stars infiltrating their every move. Reportedly, the pair continued with the liaison for some time and kept it a secret for years. They even kept things quiet from their co-star Hamill, who allegedly confronted the two but was talked out of the implication.
One of the secret couple’s wild and chaotic stories involves partying with the legendary rock group The Rolling Stones and arriving to work still drunk from the night before. In 2015, Fisher spoke with The Daily Beast, discussing her time as Princess Leia and airing many stories about her early Star Wars days. “Yes, that one’s true … I was renting Eric Idle’s house for five months, and he was doing Monty Python down in Tunisia,” the actor confirmed when asked about the rumours surrounding the rock ‘n’ roll party. “And they had a drink that they would give to the extras to make them more compliant. And they called it the Tunisian Death Drink.”
After joining Idle and meeting all the band members, including Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Fisher invited her co-star to the occasion. “I called Harrison and said, ‘Get over here! This is ridiculous!'” she recounted. After sharing an outline of the rugged crossover, the actor addressed how she and Ford never went to sleep to eliminate a hangover. This meant the two stars walked on onto The Empire Strikes Back set the next day, still drunk. “We don’t smile a lot in the movie,” Fisher added. “But there we’re smiling.”
The actors’ affair intensified from that night, with Fisher becoming more immersed in the ordeal and interested in her older co-star, stemming from a time she made the action star laugh hysterically on set. Fisher even admitted to dreaming about Ford leaving his then-wife, Mary Marquardt, for her. However, the actor revealed in her book things abruptly ended after three months.
