Carrie Fisher's steamy affair with Harrison Ford they kept secret for 40 years
Carrie wrote of their fling: "It was so intense. It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend"
It took Carrie Fisher more than four decades to finally go public about her secret affair with Harrison Ford.
Just 19 when she and the then married 33-year-old Harrison started their intense, three-month fling, she instead detailed every thought and emotion in her personal diary.
Then, just a month before her shock death four years ago today, Carrie Fisher finally shared that diary with the world.
Her decision delighted Star Wars fans, who at long last found that the bickering intense love story they had seen played out again and again on screen was in fact true to life, in some small way at least.
In The Princess Diarist, published November 2016, the then 60-year-old Carrie shared her memories of their passionate liaison.
She said of their fling: "It was so intense. It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend.”
Although Carrie had previously hinted at some sort of entanglement with the Hans Solo actor, it was only when her final book was published that she confirmed it.
The two, she shared, first got together when he rescued her from a rather creepy situation at George Lucas's London birthday party during the filming of 1977's Star Wars: A New Hope.
The youngest there and "essentially the only girl", she was surrounded by crew members after arriving at the party. After teasing her - "here’s our little princess without her buns" - they decided to get her drunk, plying her with alcoholic drinks.
Unused to alcohol, Carrie found herself quickly overwhelmed, writing: "It makes me stupid, sick, and unconscious really fast."
t's at this point that Harrison stepped in.
"Pardon me," he told a crew member who claimed Carrie wanted to get a little air, "but the lady doesn’t seem to be very aware of what she wants."
Harrison took charge of his young co-star, and after an argument with the other men, took her out of the party and to his car.
It was here that their fling began, and they first kissed.
The moment was one Carrie admitted to having fantasised about. She wrote her co-star was her "number one priority" on set.
And the kisses continued, along with nights of passion.
She writes of one occasion: "In the taxi, Harrison pulled me back into the seat, moving us closer together until we were two faces, one kiss, going to the place where we would rehearse that kissing we would be doing a year and a half later in The Empire Strikes Back.
"Check out those kisses in Empire. They did not have to use special effects."
The young Carrie even admits to fantasising her lover would give her a "gold band with diamonds [inscribed] Carrison".
But while their brief affair was passionate, the young Carrie was riddled with insecurities.
She wrote in her teenage diary: "Trying relentlessly to make you love me, but I don’t want the love.
"I quite prefer the quest for it. The challenge. I am always disappointed with someone who loves me—how perfect can he be if he can’t see through me?"
As a thoughtful teenager who had only had one boyfriend, Carrie's was constantly wondering what the taciturn Harrison thought of her.
She writes of one encounter: "I looked over at Harrison. A hero’s face – a few strands of hair fell over his noble, slightly furrowed brow. How could you ask such a shining specimen of a man to be satisfied with the likes of me?"
While much of the book is given over to her self doubts, with her teenage self penning poems about her love for Harrison, she also writes he is "kind".
"Harrison is a decent — albeit complicated and frequently silent — guy," she concluded in her book. "He’s always been decent to me, and as far as I know the only time he cheated on any of his three wives was with me. And maybe he didn’t think that counted all that much because of how short I am."
