Mark Hamill was in attendance at Carrie Fisher’s Hollywood Walk of Fame ceremony and brought with him the note he wrote six years ago in the aftermath of her tragic death. Fisher was only 60 years old when she passed away in late December 2016. Hamill and Fisher’s careers are forever intertwined thanks to their iconic roles as Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia in the “Star Wars” franchise.
During his Walk of Fame speech, Hamill noted that it was “really hard to come up with words to do Carrie justice.” He originally “got out a notebook to write down some of my thoughts,” but then he found a note he wrote about Fisher shortly after her death.
“I thought, this is relevant today as it was when I wrote it,” Hamill said about the note.
“Carrie was one of a kind. She belonged to us all, whether we liked it or not,” Hamill’s note reads. “She was our princess, dammit! And the actress who played her blurred into one gorgeous, fearlessly independent, ferociously funny, take charge woman who took our collective breath away. Determined and tough, but with a vulnerability that made you root for her and want her to succeed and be happy. She played such a crucial role in my professional and personal life. Both would’ve been far emptier without her.
“Was she a handful? Was she high maintenance? No doubt,” the note continues. “But every thing would’ve been so much drabber and less interesting if she hadn’t been the friend that she was. I’ll never stop missing her, but I’m so thankful we had her as long as we did. I’m grateful for the laughter, the wisdom, the kindness, and even the bratty, self indulgent crap my beloved space twin drove me crazy with through the years. So thank you, Carrie. I love you.”
In an interview with Variety prior to the Walk of Fame ceremony, Hamill recalled what it was like meeting Fisher for the first time. He was 24 years old at the time, while she was only 19.
“I was completely unprepared for the person I met, who just was overwhelming, in the sense that she seemed so much wiser than her years,” Hamill said. “Very funny, very spontaneous, very witty.”
Fisher’s Walk of Fame generated drama ahead of the May 4 ceremony when the actor’s daughter, Billie Lourd, disinvited Fisher’s siblings from attending the event. Fisher’s brother Todd and sisters Joely and Tricia Leigh released statements in which they expressed shock and sadness over being excluded from the ceremony. Lourd then released a statement confirming she did not invite them over “hurtful actions.”
“Days after my mom died, her brother and her sister chose to process their grief publicly and capitalize on my mother’s death, by doing multiple interviews and selling individual books for a lot of money, with my mom and my grandmother’s deaths as the subject,” Lourd said. “I found out they had done this through the press. They never consulted me or considered how this would affect our relationship.”
“To be clear — there is no feud. We have no relationship,” Lourd added. “This was a conscious decision on my part to break a cycle with a way of life I want no part of for myself or my children.”
Lourd was in attendance at the Walk of Fame ceremony and also gave a speech honoring her late mother. Watch Fisher’s full ceremony in the video below.
