After years and years of watching and re-watching the ‘Star Wars’ trilogy and now the prequels, an opportunity arose to meet one of the heroines — Carrie Fisher.

She strolled into the Front Room of the Bermuda International Film Festival on Wednesday with actor and friend of 35 years Richard Dreyfuss.

She bore little resemblance to the feisty Princess Leia Organa that I first viewed on the big screen at the now defunct Rosebank Theatre.

However, she has aged gracefully and like most women over 40, was quite at ease in her own skin. She wasn’t afraid or even bothered about making herself comfortable, as she chatted away during the BIFF Talk Back, hosted by presenter David Poland, on Wednesday.

Ms Fisher was born to one of Hollywood’s most famous couples — actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher. At 50, she feels that she has always been in a fishbowl with little space to swim and nowhere to hide.

Her biography features an enormous range of theatrical productions and films. She is also a prolific screen-writer and an award winning author.

Her novels include ‘Surrender the Pink’ (1991), ‘Delusions of Grandma’ (1993), and ‘The Best Awful There Is’ (2004), which was later renamed ‘The Best Awful’.

She received the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best First Novel for her semi-autobiographical publication ‘Postcards From the Edge’.

Aside from the all-time classic ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, she has had roles in ‘When Harry Met Sally’, ‘Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery’, ‘Shampoo’ and ‘Scream 3’ among others.

Later this year, she can be seen in ‘Fanboys’, ‘Suffering Man’s Charity’ and ‘E-Girl’.

During her career she also hosted the popular ‘Saturday Night Live’ and is also known as a script doctor on the screenplays of other writers.

And last year she also wrote and performed in her one-woman play ‘Wishful Drinking’ at the Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles.

With life’s challenges, she seems to have developed a somewhat jaded wit and throws out quips that could only be compared to that of 20th Century writer and Algonquin Round Table member Dorothy Parker.

So how did Ms Fisher go from Princess Leia to becoming one of Hollywood’s most prolific screenwriters?

“I became a celebrity at 20 and I couldn’t extract myself,” she said. “And then I did, so then I wrote books.

“But I always wanted to be a writer.”

She was never under the misguided impression that her celebrity status would be infinite, however.

“I watched my parents celebrity diminish as a teenager, so all I knew was that it was the way,” she said. “And I never had any illusions about it, or that it would be a fantastic ride.

“I knew it diminished and made you unhappy eventually. So, I just waited for that to happen and then I thought, ‘maybe I won’t wait and I’ll get out early’.

“It can be fun when it is... but it is always changing... you are either rising as a celebrity or you are going away from it.”

Most of us value our anonymity and Ms Fisher has found the media spotlight harsh — in writing, however, she found a way of taking back her own story.

“I grew up in a fishbowl and it is an act of control,” Ms Fisher said.

“They would put things in the paper about me and I wouldn’t like that version. It would be the version like, ‘Carrie Fisher goes into rehab’, or the worst one was ‘Carrie Fisher goes into a mental hospital’.

“But yes, I did. But here is my version — it’s a lot funnier.

“So it would just be like walking into a room and saying, ‘I know I am five pounds overweight, but I have an explanation. It is a version of control and it does generate empathy, so you are just like other people, but only that much more so.

“I do have an eccentric mother, but so do so many people. So that was nice to find (out). So that part of it was good.”

She does not care for celebrity interviews, finding them stunted.

“I don’t think that you would want anybody to get a tiny part of it (life) and to just explain a tiny part,” she said.

“It was a complicated thing and it’s almost like ‘so and so got a divorce’, or ‘so and so had a miscarriage’, but usually it was Princess Leia had a miscarriage.

“(As a celebrity) you don’t have any problems... you have high class problems.”

And today that coverage is getting more intrusive and intense, she suggests, in reference to the recent death of Anna Nicole Smith.

“That is much, much worse than when we were younger and they do like to watch people circle drains,” Ms Fisher stated.

“And the obsessiveness of watching people circle drains is much more intense than when we were young.”

Bermuda offers an escape from that scene, however.

“It doesn’t seem that you guys bother that much,” she said. “Who cares about celebrities, you live in Bermuda!”

Asked about the adage that money can’t buy you happiness, she quipped: “If they think that, they are just not shopping in the right stores!”

As ‘Postcards From the Edge’ was semi-autobiographical, did she get any relief or joy from publishing, writing the screenplay for it and seeing it performed?

Drawing laughs from the crowd, she said: “I prefer myself as Meryl Streep, she could play me any day!

“I could have just sat by and watched — she is much better at it.

“And she is more graceful playing me.”

On Hollywood friends: “I have lived in Hollywood for a long, long time... what can I say about all of these friends? I’m of Hollywood, but not in it.

“And I kind of live in this house off to the side, kind of like Hamburger Helper. I am used to being this, because of the celebrity parent factor, I’m very good at being friends of icons because I am good at servicing that component without interfering.... So, I am good to being a salad to a main meal if any of you require my services.

“It is an eclectic talent, but that is a skill that I have and everybody has something that they can do.”

According to fellow juror Richard Dreyfuss, Ms Fisher holds the most fabulous parties, which he said were something that could be written about forever.

It was at several of these “feasts of weirdness” that she opted to help a friend out. That friend was none other than British singer-songwriter James Blunt, who was made famous by the heart-warming song ‘You’re Beautiful’.

When asked if it was true that the Brit wrote a song while using her bathroom piano, she replied: “Yes, he wrote ‘Goodbye My Lover’ in my bathroom.

“He stays with me whenever he comes to LA.”

When asked about ‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas, she said that his dialogue was so bad, that they used to say: “You can type this sh**, but you cannot say it! It was just awful!”

And as a director, he didn’t have much to say except “faster and more intense!”

“When he lost his voice, we got him these little horn things, one said faster and the other said more intense,” she said, mimicking the way that he spoke.

“He didn’t have a big imposing personality, he talks a lot more now.”

Thirty years have passed since she wore Princess Leia’s shoes, but they still fit.

“I have the wig and now I am wearing it, I think it is kitsch now, but it is 30 years later, but it kind of looks good,” she said.

“General (Obi-Wan) Kenobi asked me to do the hologram speech, and I remember it because he asked me to do it 60 times.

“General Kenobi, years ago you served my father in the Clone Wars .......... help,” brought great applause from the audience as she recited it.

So did she understood Darth Vader’s character more after the pre-quels? She sarcastically joked: “Yes, I sat there thinking... No, I mean, no!

“But my parents are better looking than I am, which upset me.”

Throughout her life she has battled addiction and bi-polar disorder but she champions on.

When asked to sum up the highlight of her life, she kept it simple: “My daughter (Billie Catherine Lourd). She is like a regular human being.”