‘Star Wars’ Actor Mark Hamill Recalls His First Meeting With Carrie Fisher

“Star Wars” veteran Mark Hamill opened up about his friendship with late co-star Carrie Fisher in a heartfelt essay released six days after her death.

In the piece published by The Hollywood Reporter, Hamill recalled his first meeting with Fisher, which happened just before they began shooting scenes together for “Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.”

“The first time I met Carrie was at dinner in London before we started filming together,” shared Hamill, who plays Luke Skywalker in the “Star Wars” film series. “I said to the production office, ‘I’d like to meet her before we work together.’ They worked out that we’d meet for dinner.”

Since Hamill was five years older than Fisher, the “Flash” actor expected that he would be meeting a typical “high school kid.” “She was 19 years old at the time. I was a worldly 24,” Hamill wrote. “So I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, it’ll be like working with a high school kid.’ But I was just bowled over. I mean she was just so instantly ingratiating and funny and outspoken. She had a way of just being so brutally candid.”

Since then, the friendship between Hamill and Fisher had blossomed. “I loved her and loved making her laugh,” Hamill wrote. “She would do these crazy things and make me do these crazy things, but I really don’t think they were crazy after all. In a way, it was a defense mechanism for her. She was so off the wall, she could use it as protection. Part of what was so poignant about her was that she was vulnerable, that there was this glimmer of a little girl that was so appealing and it roused the protective nature in my personality.”

While Hamill and Fisher stayed friends until the latter’s passing, he revealed that their friendship wasn’t always smooth sailing. “We ran the gamut over the years, where we were in love with each other, where we hated each other’s guts,” Hamill said. “We went through it all. It’s like we were a family.”

And although Hamill found Fisher a “handful” and “high maintenance,” he revealed that his life would have been so much “drabber and less interesting if she hadn’t been the friend that she was.”

Fisher died on Dec. 27 after suffering a heart attack on Dec. 23. According to TMZ, she never regained consciousness after she went into cardiac arrest on an airplane. She passed away at UCLA Medical Center at the age of 60.

Shortly after hearing about Fisher’s death, Hamill took to Twitter to express his grief over his co-star’s passing. Read his tweets below:

Hamill is set to reprise his role as Luke Skywalker in “Star Wars: Episode VIII,” which is slated for a Dec. 15 release. Fisher will also appear in the film as Princess Leia, as she was able to shoot all her scenes in the Rian Johnson-directed movie before her death.