"Well, I Didn't MEAN To!"

 

When Carrie Fisher found herself on the set of the first Star Wars movie, part of her plan, in addition to working hard to learn the techno-babble dialogue of George Lucas, was to have a Hollywood romance. As she explains in the diary she kept at the time (later released as the book, The Princess Diarist), she DID have at least one self-imposed standard:

"It's difficult to imagine a childhood less likely to make one pro-adultery than mine. When I was born, my par­ents, the handsome singer Eddie Fisher and the beautiful actress Debbie Reynolds, were known as 'America's Sweet­hearts.' The gorgeous couple with their two adorable little babies (my brother, Todd, came along sixteen months after I did) were the American Dream realized, until Eddie left Debbie for the recently widowed gorgeous actress Elizabeth Taylor, who, just to pile it on a little more, was a friend of my mother's from their early days at the Metro-­Goldwyn-Mayer Studio. For those too old to remember or too young to care, it was one of the great midcentury tabloid feeding frenzies, and I watched it at very close range.

"So when I was contemplating having an affair on this movie, I wasn't going to include married guys. One of the things I knew when Harrison and I met was that nothing of a ro­mantic nature would happen. It wasn't even an issue. There were plenty of guys out there who were single whom I could date without needing to dip into the married guy pool. He was also far too old for me -- almost fifteen years older! I would be twenty in a matter of months, but Harrison was in his mid-thirties -- old! Well into adulthood, anyway.

"Also, he was a man. I was a girl -- a male human like him would have to be with a woman. If Harrison and I went to the prom together, no one would believe it. 'What's he doing with her? Captain of the football team and president of the cool literary club? What's he doing with Cutie-Pie Sweetcheeks, with the troll doll collection and Cary Grant obsession? Must be a glitch in the machine ... '

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It should come as no surprise that the end result of Fisher thinking more and more about not having an affair with Harrison Ford is that she kept thinking more and more about him...and they did indeed carry on a sexual affair during the making of the film.

Truth is...in the Old Testament account of Potipher's wife trying to seduce Joseph, Joseph made the wisest decision he could have. The minute he saw that reasoning with her was having no effect, he turned tail and ran away. Standing on the brink, wondering how close you can get, will almost always end in falling off the cliff.