‘Star Wars’: Mark Hamill Said Carrie Fisher Once Told Him ‘Harrowing’ Details About Debbie Reynolds, Elizabeth Taylor, and Eddie Fisher
Carrie Fisher spent her entire life in the spotlight. Her parents, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds were already celebrities by the time Fisher was born. Fisher was also the stepdaughter of Elizabeth Taylor, who married Eddie a few months after her third husband, Mike Todd, died.
In 2017, Mark Hamill shared how working alongside Fisher gave him a look inside her Hollywood family.
Carrie Fisher’s father, Eddie Fisher, left Debbie Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor
Fisher was born on October 21, 1956. The Shampoo actor was Reynolds and Eddie’s first child. Once they got married in 1955, Eddie and Reynolds were “America’s sweethearts,” and their fans gushed over their seemingly perfect family.
The perfect image of Eddie and Reynold’s marriage got tainted in 1958. In 1957, Todd died in a plane crash. Todd and Eddie were best friends, and he even named his and Reynolds’ son after the theater producer. Reynolds and Taylor also had a close relationship, as they attended high school together on the Metro-Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) lot. When Taylor married Todd, Reynolds was the Cleopatra star’s matron of honor.
Because of their bond, Reynolds asked Eddie to console Taylor when Todd died. Soon after, Eddie fell in love with Taylor and left Reynolds and their two children. In his memoir, My Girls: A Lifetime with Carrie and Debbie, Todd Fisher referred to the affair as “one of Hollywood’s biggest, most notorious scandals.”
“The world was stunned,” he wrote. “Eddie and Elizabeth were vilified. Eddie was declared a philandering, opportunistic loser, and Elizabeth was labeled a bad-girl, home-wrecking slut. Debbie, the good girl, the innocent, unsuspecting victim, and single mom, was globally embraced with love and sympathy.”
Carrie Fisher provided Mark Hamill with vivid details about her family life
After she hesitated for a year, Reynolds agreed to divorce Eddie so he could marry Taylor. He married Taylor in a small ceremony the same day he officially divorced Reynolds. The couple’s union only lasted for five years, and Taylor left Eddie for her Cleopatra co-star, Richard Burton.
Although she wasn’t her stepmother for long, Fisher apparently would tell stories about the scandal to anyone who would listen. When she first met Hamill while filming Star Wars Episode IV- A New Hope, he said Fisher gave him insider information about her famous family. In addition to speaking about her father, Fisher also told Hamill details about her stepfather. Reynolds got remarried to Harry Karl, who reportedly left her penniless, per Closer Weekly.
“She had a way of just being so brutally candid. I’d just met her, but it was like talking to a person you’d known for 10 years,” Hamill said of Fisher in an essay for The Hollywood Reporter.
“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?’” he continued. “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.”
Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher’s friendship lasted for decades
Hamill and Fisher remained in each other’s lives after the first Star Wars movie. They continued to work together on two more films in the 1970s and 1980s. In 2015, the actors reunited to shoot Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Fisher died the following year of cardiac arrest.
Hamill shared a fond memory of his time with Fisher. He said he always tried to make her laugh while they worked.
“I’m grateful that we stayed friends and got to have this second act with the new movies,” Hamill said. “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.”
