---
product_id: 36236453
title: "The Princess Diarist"
price: "NZ$55"
currency: NZD
in_stock: true
reviews_count: 13
url: https://www.desertcart.nz/products/36236453-the-princess-diarist
store_origin: NZ
region: New Zealand
---

# The Princess Diarist

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- **What is this?** The Princess Diarist
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## Description

This last book from beloved Hollywood icon Carrie Fisher is the crown jewel of ideal Star Wars gifts. The Princess Diarist is an intimate, hilarious, and revealing recollection of what happened behind the scenes on one of the most famous film sets of all time. When Carrie Fisher discovered the journals she kept during the filming of the first Star Wars movie, she was astonished to see what they had preserved—plaintive love poems, unbridled musings with youthful naiveté, and a vulnerability that she barely recognized. Before her passing, her fame as an author, actress, and pop-culture icon was indisputable, but in 1977, Carrie Fisher was just a teenager with an all-consuming crush on her costar, Harrison Ford. With these excerpts from her handwritten notebooks, The Princess Diarist is Fisher’s intimate and revealing recollection of what happened on one of the most famous film sets of all time—and what developed behind the scenes. Fisher also ponders the joys and insanity of celebrity, and the absurdity of a life spawned by Hollywood royalty, only to be surpassed by her own outer-space royalty. Laugh-out-loud hilarious and endlessly quotable, The Princess Diarist brims with the candor and introspection of a diary while offering shrewd insight into one of Hollywood's most beloved stars.

Review: For all that I loved her as an actress, her greatest talent was her writing. - "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 knows no proximity." - Carrie Fisher What in the world can be said about Carrie Fisher's remarkable gift for writing except that it was, in fact, remarkable. For all that I loved her as an actress, for all that I truly ADORED her as my personal hero, Princess Leia, writing was where her true talent lay, and I believe this is where her heart really was. "The Princess Diarist" was yet another entry into the brilliance of Ms. Fisher's mind, fogged and clouded as it was sometimes with her depression, sparkling at other times with her wit. This was the most personal book she has written, I feel, and one of the most uplifting and most poignant. She tells us in the first chapter that while going through some boxes of old writing she found the diaries she kept while filming the first Star Wars movie forty years beforehand. She begins briefly with how she got into acting 2 years before that, despite never really actively wanting to be in show business at all, and moves quickly to those days of auditions, when she read both for the parts of Princess Leia in "Star Wars" and for the titular part in the horror film "Carrie." "I thought that last role would be a funny casting coup if I got it: Carrie *as* Carrie *in* 'Carrie'." Her recollections of her own inner monologues after the casting call are fun and funny, and the way she remembers reading the script for the first is vivid and touching how much she loved it (even though that script would later be completely redone since Star Wars was not going to have that kind of budget). She tells us how much she wanted the part, how excited she was when she got the call that "they want you." She remembers laughing and running into the street in the rain. "It didn't rain in L.A. It was raining in L.A. and I was Princess Leia. I had never been Princess Leia before and now I would never not be Princess Leia. I had no idea how profoundly true that was and how long forever was." The biggest chunk of the book is her recollections of the things that happened behind the scenes during the three-month shooting, wrapping up with the crazy-wild reception of the film after it's release. Did you know that the term "blockbuster" was born shortly after "Star Wars" premiered as way to describe the lines going around the block and continuing to the next one? Carrie tells us, "It was *one movie*. It wasn't supposed to do *that.* Nothing ever had. Movies were meant to stay on the scree, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up in their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it... And on top of whatever else, Mark, Harrison, and I were the only people who were having this experience. So who do talk to that might understand?" She goes on to say that this was completely unlike starring in your average everyday movie because now she was a household name and there were cameras everywhere. "I had to comport myself with something approaching dignity, at *twenty.*" So her recollections of being in that movie forty years before could and can still apply to young stars today as an object lesson. The last 2 chapters of the book tell us about Ms. Fisher's more recent fan encounters at the conventions where she signs autographs and gives pictures, how she feels about Leia now (you'll be surprised) and how life as Leia has affected her now that the has distance and perspective of forty years to better dissect the unadulterated fandom that has surrounded this character she brought to life. Altogether a thoroughly entertaining read, and not just for the fans. Having read excerpts to my 65 year old mother who was never a fan (though she had been forced to at least peripherally watch the original trilogy multiple times due to *my* fandom and the fact that we were never so well off that there were TVs and VCRs in the kids' rooms), she was entertained enough to download the sample for herself and hooked enough from the start to buy the book. I would hear her laughing at loud when she read on her lunch break where we worked together, and also sometimes making sympathetic noises or faces at her Kindle. Trust me, you don't have to be a Star Wars fan to love this one.
Review: The Word “Diary” is Key - Let me just preface by saying I’m not a die-hard Star Wars fan. Love sci-fi as a genre but beyond the first three films, I can take or leave the rest of the series. So this wasn’t a Star Wars super-fan purchase so much as that I like autobiographies and this one made a buzz. A little bit harder to read than other autobiographies I have gotten into. I think what mostly contributes to that is the subject matter. Revealing an affair that happened years ago when she was 19 and the married guy, who BTW is none other than HARRISON FORD, would be difficult to talk about. It speaks to her character that she actually cares how this comes across not just in regard to her image but anyone else involved. There is an overly-wordy, and insecure self-deprecating quality to this book which to me comes across as an attempt to painfully amble through that experience, veiling it as she goes. I think I went into this thinking “damn girl, you and Harrison!? Nice catch!!” But instead she infuses, especially since she has her old diary, the true insecurities and painful longing a teenage girl can have in her heart about a romance. She spins in circles and struggles to rid herself of the all-consuming feeling of it. That, stylistically, puts you in that place and time with her. It’s easy to forget that stuff over time, but her diary discovery obviously forced it all back out there. It turns out this is one of several autobiographical pieces that cover different topics (which I wasn’t aware of.) I haven’t read the others, but it’s an interesting approach. As a complete book it probably could have benefitted from a co-author for the sake of organization of thoughts and story-flow. It often goes into a stream of consciousness style and lingers there for quite a while. However Fisher is quite the wordsmith, she does know her way around the language.

## Technical Specifications

| Specification | Value |
|---------------|-------|
| Best Sellers Rank | #145,370 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #49 in Humor Essays (Books) #274 in Self-Help & Psychology Humor #461 in Memoirs (Books) |
| Customer Reviews | 4.1 out of 5 stars 8,246 Reviews |

## Images

![The Princess Diarist - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81GPpV5H5OL.jpg)

## Customer Reviews

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ For all that I loved her as an actress, her greatest talent was her writing.
*by M***R on June 1, 2018*

"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 knows no proximity." - Carrie Fisher What in the world can be said about Carrie Fisher's remarkable gift for writing except that it was, in fact, remarkable. For all that I loved her as an actress, for all that I truly ADORED her as my personal hero, Princess Leia, writing was where her true talent lay, and I believe this is where her heart really was. "The Princess Diarist" was yet another entry into the brilliance of Ms. Fisher's mind, fogged and clouded as it was sometimes with her depression, sparkling at other times with her wit. This was the most personal book she has written, I feel, and one of the most uplifting and most poignant. She tells us in the first chapter that while going through some boxes of old writing she found the diaries she kept while filming the first Star Wars movie forty years beforehand. She begins briefly with how she got into acting 2 years before that, despite never really actively wanting to be in show business at all, and moves quickly to those days of auditions, when she read both for the parts of Princess Leia in "Star Wars" and for the titular part in the horror film "Carrie." "I thought that last role would be a funny casting coup if I got it: Carrie *as* Carrie *in* 'Carrie'." Her recollections of her own inner monologues after the casting call are fun and funny, and the way she remembers reading the script for the first is vivid and touching how much she loved it (even though that script would later be completely redone since Star Wars was not going to have that kind of budget). She tells us how much she wanted the part, how excited she was when she got the call that "they want you." She remembers laughing and running into the street in the rain. "It didn't rain in L.A. It was raining in L.A. and I was Princess Leia. I had never been Princess Leia before and now I would never not be Princess Leia. I had no idea how profoundly true that was and how long forever was." The biggest chunk of the book is her recollections of the things that happened behind the scenes during the three-month shooting, wrapping up with the crazy-wild reception of the film after it's release. Did you know that the term "blockbuster" was born shortly after "Star Wars" premiered as way to describe the lines going around the block and continuing to the next one? Carrie tells us, "It was *one movie*. It wasn't supposed to do *that.* Nothing ever had. Movies were meant to stay on the scree, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up in their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it... And on top of whatever else, Mark, Harrison, and I were the only people who were having this experience. So who do talk to that might understand?" She goes on to say that this was completely unlike starring in your average everyday movie because now she was a household name and there were cameras everywhere. "I had to comport myself with something approaching dignity, at *twenty.*" So her recollections of being in that movie forty years before could and can still apply to young stars today as an object lesson. The last 2 chapters of the book tell us about Ms. Fisher's more recent fan encounters at the conventions where she signs autographs and gives pictures, how she feels about Leia now (you'll be surprised) and how life as Leia has affected her now that the has distance and perspective of forty years to better dissect the unadulterated fandom that has surrounded this character she brought to life. Altogether a thoroughly entertaining read, and not just for the fans. Having read excerpts to my 65 year old mother who was never a fan (though she had been forced to at least peripherally watch the original trilogy multiple times due to *my* fandom and the fact that we were never so well off that there were TVs and VCRs in the kids' rooms), she was entertained enough to download the sample for herself and hooked enough from the start to buy the book. I would hear her laughing at loud when she read on her lunch break where we worked together, and also sometimes making sympathetic noises or faces at her Kindle. Trust me, you don't have to be a Star Wars fan to love this one.

### ⭐⭐⭐⭐ The Word “Diary” is Key
*by J***. on August 5, 2025*

Let me just preface by saying I’m not a die-hard Star Wars fan. Love sci-fi as a genre but beyond the first three films, I can take or leave the rest of the series. So this wasn’t a Star Wars super-fan purchase so much as that I like autobiographies and this one made a buzz. A little bit harder to read than other autobiographies I have gotten into. I think what mostly contributes to that is the subject matter. Revealing an affair that happened years ago when she was 19 and the married guy, who BTW is none other than HARRISON FORD, would be difficult to talk about. It speaks to her character that she actually cares how this comes across not just in regard to her image but anyone else involved. There is an overly-wordy, and insecure self-deprecating quality to this book which to me comes across as an attempt to painfully amble through that experience, veiling it as she goes. I think I went into this thinking “damn girl, you and Harrison!? Nice catch!!” But instead she infuses, especially since she has her old diary, the true insecurities and painful longing a teenage girl can have in her heart about a romance. She spins in circles and struggles to rid herself of the all-consuming feeling of it. That, stylistically, puts you in that place and time with her. It’s easy to forget that stuff over time, but her diary discovery obviously forced it all back out there. It turns out this is one of several autobiographical pieces that cover different topics (which I wasn’t aware of.) I haven’t read the others, but it’s an interesting approach. As a complete book it probably could have benefitted from a co-author for the sake of organization of thoughts and story-flow. It often goes into a stream of consciousness style and lingers there for quite a while. However Fisher is quite the wordsmith, she does know her way around the language.

### ⭐⭐⭐ Not What I Expected But Glad I Read It
*by D***B on January 27, 2021*

As a 42 year Star Wars fan, (I saw it for the first time in the 1979 rerelease, just before Empire was released in 1980), I was hoping for behind the scenes information. I have all of the “Making of Star Wars” books and was hoping for Carrie’s personal recollection of “behind the scenes” moments. There is a bit of that but not to the extent in which I was hoping. The book vaguely touches on her affair with Harrison Ford but this is no kiss and tell. What she reveals about their three month relationship is mostly her feelings of inadequacy and his silence. Her struggles have been played out in the public eye and through her own books, so I shouldn’t have been surprised at her internal angst and turmoil but I was. Unnerving to say the least. This is the first book of Carrie’s that I have read. She has self-deprecating humor and the reader feels that she is talking to them personally, but her constant negative internal musings and opinions of herself reveal that she was totally opposite of Princess Leia. I felt sorry for her and all the self imposed angst she went through. As Leia, she was strong willed, hard headed and tough. The first Princess who could kick your butt and smile while doing it. She publicly struggled with issues and from reading this book her internal demons were the reason why. This is a book more about what she was feeling, thinking and imagining while she was making Star Wars, not so much about behind the scenes of making the movie. If you are a die hard Star Wars fan like myself, this book will leave you unsatisfied and slightly depressed. I am glad I bought and read it because it separates the actress from the character. We get to see the real Carrie and not just the character on the screen. Two totally different personalities, one real and one scripted, merged and melded forever in our hearts. If you love all things Star Wars, then buy this book. It is a very real version of Carrie’s thoughts and feelings during that 3 month period when history was being made. If you are looking for seedy details of an elicit affair, you will be disappointed. Thank you Carrie Fisher for bringing to life the feistiest Princess to grace the silver screen, I am just sad that the woman behind the Princess didn’t see just how great she really was. Rest In Peace.

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*Last updated: 2026-05-14*