Everywhere I looked, things were new. British crew: new. The way I was treated: new. The feeling that so many things were possible it was difficult to name them, or focus on them, for long: very new.
I read the dialogue and it was impossible. On my first day I had a scene with Peter Cushing, who played Governor Tarkin. This is the scene when I was supposed to say, “I thought I recognized your foul stench when I arrived on board.” Who talks like that, except maybe a pirate in the seventeenth century? I looked at it and thought it should be said more like, “Hey, Governor Tarkin, I knew I’d see you here. When I got on board this ship I thought, My God! What is that smell? It’s gotta be Governor Tarkin. Everyone knows that the guy smells like a wheel of cheese that someone found in their car after seven weeks!” So I did it like that, more sardonic than emotional. Fearless and like an actual human, but not serious. Ironic. Some chick from Long Island who’s not scared of you or anyone you might know.
And this was when George gave me the only direction that I ever received from him other than his usual suggestion to make everything you’re saying “faster” or “more intense.” He took me aside and in a very solemn voice told me, “This is a very big deal for Leia. Huge. I mean, her planet is about to get blown up by these guys. And that means everything that she knows is gonna be gone forever. So you’re very upset. She is very upset.”
I listened carefully because I was the one with most of the earnest lines, and prior to this I didn’t know whether I was going to have to deliver them earnestly. When you watch the movie, it turns out that the voice I used when I was upset was vaguely British, and my not-upset voice is less British.
? ? ?
because I grimaced each time one of the blanks noisily exited my laser gun, I had to take shooting lessons from the policeman who prepared Robert De Niro for his terrifying, psychotic role in Taxi Driver. Actually, it wouldn’t become a laser gun until post-production. Thus the expression “We’ll fix it in post.” (I wanted to be fixed in post, but this wouldn’t become possible until the birth of collagen injections in Poland in the early eighties. As far as I know there have been no Polish jokes in conjunction with this important discovery. Perhaps this is because looking younger is no joking matter or because something that expensive generally isn’t considered all that amusing unless it’s injected into the lips—and then it’s so painful, it makes a bikini wax something you reflect upon longingly and with shorter hair. I do know that women have to look younger longer—in part due to the fact that cragginess doesn’t enhance most women’s overall appearance, and in part because I don’t know that many straight men whose goal is to achieve a kind of dewy teenage appearance. But maybe I don’t get around enough.)
? ? ?
there was one other woman on the movie besides Pat McDermott and the continuity “girl,” and that was Kay Freeborn. Kay was married to Stuart Freeborn and they had a son, Graham. All of them worked on the movie doing makeup. Stuart had been doing makeup since the silent films, where a lot of makeup was required, since you couldn’t hear the dialogue and how you looked was everything. He appeared to me to be about eighty, so he was probably about fifty-five or sixty. He would tell stories while applying your makeup, while the heat of the larger-than-usual lights warmed you. Kay was largely in charge of my makeup, of course, seeing as we were both women—and in an all-male space-fantasy world, we women had to stick together. But Stuart was also known to do mine on occasion.
Stuart seemed to always have a smile on his face (where else would he have a smile?) while he powdered you down and up. “I remember I was doing Vivien Leigh’s makeup for Fire Over England, which starred herself and her future husband, Laurence Olivier. They had fallen in love while starring in the picture together—but both of them were still married to other people, so they could only really see one another on the sly or they’d get caught, you know. And there was I—a young man myself then—hard to believe now, I know.”
I’d interject here, “No! You look incredible!”
He’d laugh gratefully and continue his story. “Well, you’re a nice girl,” he’d say, smoothing rouge on my cheek with one of his many sponges.
“No! I’m not! I’m not nice! Ask anyone—they’ll tell you!”
“So there I’d be, working on Miss Leigh’s lipstick for nigh on two hours—for the film was being shot in Technicolor and the lips had to be very red but the skin slightly gray.”
I grimaced. “Gray?!”
Stuart laughed as he moved to my other cheek. “’Twas to do with the four-step color process of Technicolor. They don’t use it these days—too complicated.” My eyebrows were next to receive his cinematic enhancement. “So there I am. It took me all of two hours to do Miss Leigh’s lips just right, and don’t you know, I’m just about finished and there she is, camera ready, and who comes in but his lordship. Only he wasn’t his lordship then, of course, he was just that new actor Larry Olivier. Most called him Larry then—but to strangers or fans he was Laurence Olivier, up-and-coming star-to-be. Whatever you called him, though, he came and swooped down, kissing her then and there. All my work—hours of it, like I told you—out the window, and nothing for it but to start all over again.”
He shrugged. “Nothin’ to be done about it. They were in love and that’s all there was to it. You’re only young once, so they tell me. Shame, but there it is.”
carrison
I’ve spent so many years not telling the story of Harrison and me having an affair on the first Star Wars movie that it’s difficult to know exactly how to tell it now. I suppose I’m writing this because it’s forty years later and whoever we were then—superficially at least—we no longer are now. Whoever I might’ve infuriated then wouldn’t have the energy to be infuriated now. And even if they did, I wouldn’t have the energy to feel as guilty as I would have thirty or twenty or—well, there’s no way I could’ve written it even ten years ago.
There’s not much in my life that I’ve kept secret. Many would argue there are certain otherwise-private stories I might’ve been wiser to keep closer to the vest. That vest that knows no proximity.
But Carrison is something I’ve only vaguely alluded to in the past forty years. Why? Why not blather on about this like I’ve blathered on about everything else? Was it the one thing I wanted to know all by myself—well, me and Harrison? I can only speculate. Anyway there are rules about kissing and telling, aren’t there? I’d like to think those only apply to men. And Harrison’s been very good about not talking about his half of the story. But just because he’s been good doesn’t mean that I have to continue to be. Mum is the word for just so long and then it has to go back to being a British parent.
Of course, I didn’t feel truly comfortable telling the story before now—and still don’t, and probably still won’t at whatever point in the future that you’re actually reading this—not only because I’m not necessarily a comfortable person in general, but because Harrison was married at the time, and also because really, why would you tell other people about something like that unless you were one of those people who tell everybody everything, not caring about how a particular revelation might affect anyone else who appears in the story?