Carrie Fisher Once Wrote She Wasn’t Truly ‘Heartbroken’ Until Separated From 1 Person (Not Harrison Ford)

Carrie Fisher broke out as an actor in Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope. Decades later, her short-lived relationship with Harrison Ford that occurred during filming became public knowledge. However, it wasn’t until long after that Fisher says she experienced real heartbreak for the first time.

Carrie Fisher had an affair with ‘Star Wars’ co-star Harrison Ford

Fisher is best known for her role in the Star Wars films. She portrayed Princess Leia alongside Ford’s Han Solo and Mark Hamill’s Luke Skywalker in the original ’70s and ’80s trilogy. Fisher reprised her role in the infamous sequel series prior to her death in 2016.

Among the many tidbits from behind-the-scenes shared over the years, one of the most surprising came when Fisher confirmed that she and Ford had an affair while filming the first movie in 1976. She wrote about this in her 2016 memoir The Princess Diarist, describing it as “unreciprocated love” on her part.

She married Paul Simon and had a child with Bryan Lourd

Before The Princess Diarist, Fisher wrote two other memoirs: Wishful Drinking (which was adapted from a one-woman show she did) and Shockaholic. In them, she touches on her two other most significant relationships: Those with musician Paul Simon and talent agent Bryan Lourd.

According to the actor herself, Fisher and Simon “were together for over twelve years (off and on),” through most of her 20s. They were married for two years, divorced, and got back together later. After splitting up again, Fisher was in a relationship with Lourd. With him, she had a daughter, Billie Lourd.

Fisher wrote openly about her drug use

In addition to her romantic endeavors, Fisher used her memoirs to talk about her mental health and drug use over the years. She detailed her use of codeine, Oxycotin, and LSD in them, as well as how this led to her writing her first book, the fictional (yet somewhat autobiographical) Postcards From the Edge.

“I used to refer to my drug use as putting the monster in the box,” Fisher wrote in Wishful Drinking. “I wanted to be less, so I took more—simple as that.” She started attending AA meetings at 28, but noted that she had “four or five [drug] slips in twenty-three years,” adding that she “keep(s) going back.”

She was ‘heartbroken’ when her daughter was taken away

During one of these “slips,” Fisher’s daughter went to live with her ex. She called this “obviously the move that made the most sense” in Shockaholic. “But simply because this was the most sensible solution under the circumstances didn’t do much to make my loss of her treasured company any easier to bear,” Fisher wrote.

“For the first time in my life I really felt that I understood the word ‘heartbroken,” the actor continued. “Which, of course, was made all the worse by knowing that I had brought all this breakage on myself. But she would remain safe and out of my potential harm’s way until I could turn my insensibly spinning life around.”