Fisher plays the rebel leader in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back, the entry where the character is given the most to do: commanding an evacuation, running a damaged ship and conducting an argument that the film treats as more urgent than the pursuit. She plays authority as impatience, which is why the comedy works.
She came from a Hollywood family and was cast in the franchise at nineteen. Alongside acting she built a substantial career as a writer, publishing novels and memoirs and working extensively as an uncredited script doctor on other people's screenplays, a role she was widely respected for within the industry.
Recurring subjects: impatience with incompetence, women holding authority in rooms that will not grant it, and comedy delivered as exasperation. Her writing voice, sharp and self deprecating, carried into her performances, and her later public work on mental health was conducted with the same refusal of euphemism.
Her space opera role is among the most recognisable in cinema, and her writing, particularly a memoir about bipolar disorder and addiction, made her an unusually candid public figure on subjects the industry preferred to hide. She was posthumously honoured for that advocacy as much as for the performances.
For viewers who want to follow a performer into her own writing. Suited to anyone approaching the space opera trilogy, and to those who should read the memoirs afterwards.
