50 Fun Facts About Princess Leia

In The Empire Strikes Back, the Empire attacks Leia's Rebel base on which planet?

Hoth: when the Empire tracks the Alliance to the ice world, Leia stays to direct the evacuation and has to flee at the last minute aboard the Millennium Falcon.

Of which planet is Leia a princess?

Alderaan is blown up by the Death Star in the first film, and that loss drives everything Leia does next: with no home or family left, all she has is her cause.

Which senator adopts Leia as a baby?

Bail Organa is there when the twins are born and offers at once to take the girl, saying he and his wife had always talked of adopting a daughter.

Who is Leia's birth mother?

Padmé Amidala lives just long enough to name both twins: the medical droid finds nothing physically wrong with her and says she has lost the will to live.

On which asteroid outpost are Luke and Leia born?

Polis Massa is the remote medical outpost the newborn twins soon leave, to be split up and hidden where the Sith will never sense them.

In which droid does Leia hide the stolen Death Star plans?

R2-D2 gets away in an escape pod only because an Imperial gunnery captain orders his crew to hold fire: the scanners show no life forms aboard.

Which abandoned base does Leia name to Tarkin to try to save her home planet?

Dantooine: Tarkin calls it too remote to make an effective demonstration and fires on her home planet anyway, and his scouts later report the base long deserted.

Under what bounty-hunter alias does Leia infiltrate Jabba's palace?

Boushh: in the disguise she pulls a live thermal detonator while haggling over Chewbacca's bounty, and a delighted Jabba calls the hunter fearless and inventive.

How does Leia kill Jabba the Hutt?

She strangles him with her chain, turning the very thing that bound her to his throne into a weapon while his guards are busy fighting Luke outside.

In the sequel trilogy films, what is the name of Leia's son?

Ben Solo falls to the dark side as Kylo Ren and kills his own father, yet Leia never stops believing that he can be brought home.

What rank does Leia hold in the Resistance?

General: she founded the Resistance herself, and director J.J. Abrams said that leading it, rather than becoming a Jedi like her brother, was simply a choice she made.

Asked what the stolen Death Star plans are, what one word does young Leia say to end Rogue One?

Hope: a digital copy of the young Carrie Fisher's face was laid over a Norwegian actress, Ingvild Deila, and the word itself came from an old recording of Fisher's voice.

Who stepped in as Leia for the brief flashback in The Rise of Skywalker?

Billie Lourd played the young Leia on set, and the effects team then replaced her face with her mother's, taken from Return of the Jedi footage.

Fisher's daughter plays which Resistance officer in the sequel trilogy?

Lieutenant Connix wears a hairstyle that nods to Leia's own; her actress had first been called in to audition for the lead role of Rey.

Which co-star, five years Fisher's senior, played Leia's twin?

Mark Hamill was born in 1951 and Fisher in 1956; their characters became twins only in the script of the third film, years after both were cast.

Which actress was offered Leia but declined because of a Disney contract?

Jodie Foster, barely a teenager at the time, would not pull out of the Disney film she was making; she later joked that as Leia she might have gone with different hair.

On the Death Star, Leia blasts open a wall grate and leads her rescuers down into what?

A trash compactor: minutes after being freed she grabs a blaster, shoots out the grate and orders the men into the garbage chute, taking charge of her own rescue.

An early Star Wars draft made Leia the daughter of Owen and Beru Lars, making her Luke's what?

Cousin: Owen and Beru are Luke's uncle and aunt, and George Lucas made Leia his twin sister only years later, while Return of the Jedi was being written.

Which Ewok finds Leia unconscious in the forest of Endor and becomes her first friend there?

Wicket prods her awake with his spear and is won over with a scrap of food, a friendship that ends with his whole tribe fighting beside the Rebels.

Fisher said a cut scene of Leia hanging upside down, yellow-eyed, echoed which horror film?

The Exorcist: Fisher said the scene was cut because Leia would have been unconscious, leaving Chewbacca to carry her for the next fifteen minutes of the film.

What food is Leia's 1977 hairstyle nicknamed after?

Cinnamon buns: asked why his heroines have such crazy hairdos, George Lucas said he had been working very hard to create something that was not fashion.

George Lucas said Leia's 1977 hairstyle was modelled on women revolutionaries of which country?

Mexico: Lucas described a turn-of-the-century 'Pancho Villa woman revolutionary look', but a Denver Art Museum exhibit on the films pointed to a traditional Hopi hairstyle.

After Leia's death, Rey buries Leia's lightsaber beside her brother's on which planet?

Tatooine: Rey lays both sabers to rest at the desert farm where Luke grew up, then takes the family's name as her own while the twins' spirits look on.

Empire magazine traced Leia's hairstyle to Queen Fria, a character in which 1930s comic strip?

Flash Gordon: George Lucas first tried to buy the film rights to it, and wrote his own space adventure only after the strip's owners turned him away.

Which fantasy illustrator's work inspired the design of Leia's metal bikini?

Frank Frazetta's fantasy art was the designer's stated inspiration, and her team took a mould of Fisher's torso so that the hard metal pieces would fit exactly.

Carrie Fisher said George Lucas would not let her wear what under Leia's white dress in the first film?

A bra: Lucas told her 'there's no underwear in space', which led to her request that her obituary say she 'drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra'.

About how much did one of Leia's original metal bikini costumes fetch at auction in 2015?

$96,000, after bidding opened at $80,000, for a costume that is on screen for only a couple of minutes of Return of the Jedi.

Which comedian wore a replica of Leia's metal bikini on GQ's cover in August 2015?

Amy Schumer followed Jennifer Aniston, whose Rachel put the outfit on in a 1996 episode of Friends to act out Ross's Leia fantasy.

Carrie Fisher joked that the only reason to go into acting is if you get to do what?

Kill a giant monster: she meant Jabba the Hutt, and when the crew offered her a stunt double for the scene she refused, calling it the best time she ever had as an actor.

Which Star Wars character did Carrie Fisher say she would rather have played?

Han Solo: on first reading the script she thought his was the part to be, always wry and sardonic, while Leia was mostly worried or angry, which she said was no fun to play.

Leia greets her would-be rescuer in her cell with 'Aren't you a little short for a' what?

Stormtrooper: Luke Skywalker has come to her cell in stolen white armour, and the first thing the captive princess does is mock her rescuer's height.

Before swinging across a Death Star chasm with Luke, what does Leia give him 'for luck'?

A kiss: with Imperial troops firing from behind and no bridge, she kisses the startled farm boy and they swing across; neither yet knows the other is a twin.

A teenage Leia appears in which animated series?

Star Wars Rebels: voiced by Julie Dolan, she arrives posing as a loyal Imperial on a relief mission, a role producer Dave Filoni called almost a double agent.

In which 2022 live-action series is a ten-year-old Leia kidnapped?

Obi-Wan Kenobi: her parents call the old Jedi out of hiding to bring her back, and NPR's critic wrote that Vivien Lyra Blair 'practically channels' Carrie Fisher's wisecracking spirit.

Who ghostwrote the 1976 novelization that first introduced Leia in print?

Alan Dean Foster wrote it from the screenplay, but the cover carried George Lucas's name, and it reached bookshops six months before anyone had seen the film.

Which 1978 novel was written as the basis for a cheap sequel in case Star Wars flopped?

Splinter of the Mind's Eye was built to be filmed cheaply: it is set on a fog-bound planet and leaves out Harrison Ford's character, as he had not signed for a sequel.

In the Legends novels, Leia's youngest child is named after which man?

Anakin Skywalker: her third child, born after a pair of twins, is Anakin Solo, who grows up afraid of following his grandfather to the dark side.

What is the name of Leia's ship, boarded by Darth Vader at the start of the first film?

Tantive IV: Rogue One ends with the small ship breaking away from the Rebel flagship with the stolen plans aboard, only minutes ahead of Darth Vader.

In the Legends novels, Leia succeeds which Rebel leader as Chief of State?

Mon Mothma hands her the New Republic's top office, so the princess who led a rebellion ends up running a government, a post she later resigns.

In The Courtship of Princess Leia, what does a suitor win at cards for her?

A planet: with Prince Isolder showering her in treasure, her smuggler suitor wins the deed to Dathomir at sabacc to match him, then takes her there, and they end up married.

How does Leia survive open space in The Last Jedi?

She pulls herself back with the Force, making good on what Luke told her on Endor decades earlier: that the Force is strong in their family and she has that power too.

Whom does Leia stun with a blaster after his mutiny in The Last Jedi?

Poe Dameron had judged Vice Admiral Holdo's escape plan cowardly and seized the ship; Leia wakes from her injuries, stuns him and carries the plan out herself.

Which Hollywood star was the mother of Leia's actress, Carrie Fisher?

Debbie Reynolds raised her largely alone after Eddie Fisher left for Elizabeth Taylor, and in their last years mother and daughter lived next door to each other.

Which semi-autobiographical novel did Fisher publish in 1987?

Postcards from the Edge follows an actress putting her life back together after an overdose, as Fisher herself had, and she wrote the screenplay for the 1990 film.

What was the title of Fisher's one-woman stage show?

Wishful Drinking went the opposite way to most hits: it began as a stage show in Los Angeles in 2006 and only afterwards became a bestselling memoir and an HBO film.

Which 1975 comedy was Carrie Fisher's first film?

Shampoo: at 17 she played a precociously seductive teenager opposite Warren Beatty, and it was the only film she had made when Star Wars came along two years later.

Which Blues Brothers co-star briefly became engaged to Fisher on set?

Dan Aykroyd proposed in a trailer on the set, minutes after saving her with the Heimlich manoeuvre when she choked on a Brussels sprout; she went back to Paul Simon instead.

On what date in 2023 did Fisher receive her Hollywood Walk of Fame star?

May 4 is Star Wars Day, for its echo of 'May the Force be with you'; her daughter sprinkled the new star with glitter, as Fisher used to do to fans at conventions.

What was the name of the French bulldog Fisher brought to interviews?

Gary walked red carpets beside her and sat through a screening of The Force Awakens; he watched it panting, which Fisher said she took as a good review.

Fisher's ashes were placed in a giant pill of which antidepressant?

Prozac: the outsize pill was her favourite possession, her brother said, so he and her daughter decided it was where the mental health campaigner would want to be.