A sweet goodbye. Mark Hamill penned a heartfelt tribute to his late friend and Star Wars costar Carrie Fisher, remembering the spitfire actress and how he “loved making her laugh.”
Reminiscing about meeting Fisher, who died at age 60 on December 27, Hamill wrote in The Hollywood Reporter, “I was so middle class. Growing up, the closest thing to a celebrity we had was our next door neighbor, who was a baggage handler who returned Jerry Lewis‘ wallet that fell on the tarmac in San Diego. But Carrie was something completely different. She dropped out of high school to be in the chorus of Irene on Broadway. I was just in awe of her.”
The actor, who portrays Luke Skywalker in the iconic space opera, also discussed reuniting with Fisher for the new trilogy, which launched with Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “I’m grateful that we stayed friends and got to have this second act with the new movies,” he wrote. “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.”
But despite the occasional siblinglike squabble, Hamill, 65, remembers Fisher at her best. “When you were in her good graces, you couldn’t have more fun with any person on the planet,” he recalled. “She was able to make you feel like you were the most important thing in her life. I think that’s a really rare quality. And then you could go 180 degrees opposite, where you were furious with one another and wouldn’t speak for weeks and weeks. But that’s all part of what makes a relationship complete. It’s not all one-sided. Like I say, she was a handful. She was high maintenance. But my life would have been so much drabber and less interesting if she hadn’t been the friend that she was.”
The film and stage actress passed away four days after suffering a medical emergency aboard a flight from London to L.A. One day later, her mom, the iconic Debbie Reynolds, died at 84, reportedly while planning her daughter’s funeral.
