Carrie Fisher - The Princess Diarist

Charlies Angels, Laverne & Shirley, and Family Feud premiered on TV.

Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs founded the Apple computer company in a garage.

The Food and Drug Administration banned Red Dye No. 2 after it was found to cause tumors in the bladders of dogs.

Howard Hughes died at age seventy of kidney failure in a private jet en route to a Houston hospital. He was worth more than $2 billion and weighed 90 pounds.

Anne Rices debut novel, Interview with the Vampire, was published.

Israel rescued 102 Air France passengers who were being held hostage at the Entebbe Airport in Uganda.

The Queen sent the first royal e-mail, London was bombed by the IRA and the Sex Pistols, and Queens Bohemian Rhapsody went gold.

Andy Williamss ex-wife Claudine Longet accidentally, she claimed, shot her skier lover, Spider Sabich, to death.

A Pennsylvania congressman won renomination for a 12th term despite having been dead for two weeks.

Caitlyn Jenner, still Bruce then, won the gold medal in the Olympic decathlon, and the title Worlds Greatest Athlete.

So many things were happening.

The first Ebola outbreak occurred in Africa, there was a panic over swine flu, and in a contaminated Philadelphia hotel, Legionnaires disease killed twenty-nine people.

A military coup deposed Argentinas president Isabel Pern.

Sal Mineo was stabbed to death, and Agatha Christie and Andr Malraux died, though not together.

Saul Bellow won the Pulitzer Prize for Humboldts Gift and the Nobel Prize for Literature for his body of work.

Son of Sam killed his first victim.

Riots in Soweto marked the beginning of the end of apartheid in South Africa.

The rock band that would become U2 was formed.

The United States Tennis Association barred transsexual Rene Richards from playing in the U.S. Open.

Network gave us Howard Beales iconic rant, Im as mad as hell and Im not going to take this anymore, and Paul Simon won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year for Still Crazy After All These Years.

Jimmy Carter beat Gerald Ford, even after saying in a Playboy interview that he lusted after women in his heart.

Ryan Reynolds and Benedict Cumberbatch were born, as were Colin Farrell, Rashida Jones, Alicia Silverstone, Rick Ross, Anna Faris, Peyton Manning, Audrey Tautou, Ja Rule, and Reese Witherspoon.

George Harrison was found guilty of plagiarizing Hes So Fine for My Sweet Lord.

Buffalo Bills running back O. J. Simpson had the best game of his career, rushing a then record 273 yards and scoring two touchdowns against the Detroit Lions.

Mao Tse-tung died.

The Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty, ruling that this punishment was not particularly cruel or unusual.

The Band played its farewell concert in San Francisco.

Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton separated after four months of marriage, which had been preceded by sixteen months of divorce.

America celebrated its bicentennial.

I think you get the picture. It was a year that, like all years, a lot of things happened in. People were on TV or in movies, they wrote songs that were liked more than other songs, while other people excelled at sports, and, as always, a lot of accomplished and famous people died. But through it all, one big thing that was beginning to happenand that still, lo these many decades later, hasnt stopped happeningis Star Wars.

We were filming Star Wars in London in 1976, and none of us in the cast had any idea how significantly our lives would be altered when the movie premiered the following year.

c ut to: 2013. Much the same kinds of things were happening, only faster and more intensely. And George Lucas announced that the Star Wars franchise was starting up again, and that the original cast would be in it.

I was surprised. As surprised as you can be and still be so far over forty. I mean, I thought they might make more Star Wars moviesnot that I thought about it all that muchbut I doubted that I would find myself in them. And now it looked like I would! Hallelujah!

Not because I liked appearing up on a screen. I didnt like it when I was the age one could like it, but now they had 3-D and high-def and such, so that all your wrinkles and withered puffiness need their own agents, so if I didnt like it then, Id never like it now, and going forward to eventually. The bummer was that I wouldnt be able to watch the new sequel. Not with me in it. But to hell with that! Someone could tell me about it!

If I was going to do the new Star Wars, theyd have to pay me something, even though the cloud of doubt could easily and gradually be cast over that potential fact based on some of the history of the Star Wars company. (No merchandising! But maybe Id get some this time!)

And theyd have us all over the barrel of our wanting to be in it. And they could just as easily write any of us out. Well, maybe not easily, but they could write us out if we wrangled too long over what we wanted to be paid. And by we, in this case, I mean I.

And as much as I may have joked about Star Wars over the years, I liked that I was in those films. Particularly as the only girl in an all-boy fantasy. They were fun to make. It was an anecdote of unimaginable standing.

I liked being Princess Leia. Or Princess Leias being me. Over time I thought that wed melded into one. I dont think you could think of Leia without my lurking in that thought somewhere. And Im not talking about masturbation. So Princess Leia are us.