Mark Hamill, Billie Lourd Pay Emotional Tribute to Carrie Fisher as She Gets Walk of Fame Star

May the Fourth may be Star Wars Day but today, it was declared “Carrie Fisher Day” by Mark Hamill as the late actress finally got her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

During the ceremony, both her Star Wars co-star Hamill and daughter Billie Lourd remembered the woman who made Princess Leia an icon. In his speech, Hamill remembered when he first met Fisher at a dinner while they were filming Star Wars.

“I remember thinking, ‘she’s 19 years old, she’s barely out of high school’ – I was a worldly 24 – and every expectation I had was just obliterated,” he recalled. “She was so charming, so funny, so adorable, so wise beyond her years. I just couldn’t believe it.”

“And brutally frank!,” he added to laughs from the crowd. “She started telling me stories – intimate stories – about her family that I was thinking, ‘should I be hearing this?’ I mean, these were things that I would probably not tell friends unless I knew them for years, but that was Carrie. She also had a wisdom that seemed to be far beyond what a 19 year old should be expected to have.”

He revealed that he talked to Lourd about struggling with finding the words to do Fisher justice, but went back to the post he shared shortly after her death in 2016. He then read the tribute aloud, which says, in part, that “she was OUR Princess, damn it, and the actress who played her blurred into one gorgeous, fiercely independent, and ferociously funny, take-charge woman who took our collective breath away.”

He concluded his speech by acknowledging that it’s sad that Fisher couldn’t have been there for the ceremony, “but she wouldn’t want us to be sad. She’d want us to have fun. She’d want us to laugh.”

Lourd took the podium a few moments later, remembering what it was like growing up with a Star Wars legend as her mom – even if it took a few years for Lourd to get on board with the Star Wars of it all. 

“Like most kids, I grew up thinking my mom was a little bit – okay, a lot – embarrassing. She tried to alter my opinion by showing me this ‘cool movie’ she was in, Star Wars. I don’t know if any of you have ever heard of it, I haven’t,” she joked. “She used to love to tell the story of how every time she would try to put it on, I would roll my eyes and yell, ‘it’s too loud Mommy!’ or fearfully question, ‘is that lady in the TV you?’ It wasn’t until middle school that I decided to watch it on my own accord – not because I had suddenly developed a keen interest in ‘70s sci-fi, but because boys started coming up to me and telling me they ‘fantasized’ about my mom.”

“So,” she continued, “I went home to investigate who this person was they were talking about. I finally watched the movie I had forever considered ‘too loud’ and finally figured out what all the fuss was about the lady in the TV. I wanted to hate it so I could tell her how lame she was. Like any kid, I didn’t want my mom to be hot or cool. She was my mom! But that day, staring at the screen, I realized no one is or will ever be as hot or as cool as Princess Leia.”

Later that year, Lourd said, she went to San Diego Comic-Con with her mom, and realized for the first time just how “widespread and deep people’s love for Leia was, even after so many years.

“I realized then that Leia is more than just a character; she’s a feeling,” she said. “She is strength, she is grace, she is wit. She is femininity at its finest. She knows what she wants and she gets it. She doesn’t need anyone to rescue her because she rescues herself, and even rescues the rescuers. And no one could’ve played her like my mother.”

She added that, since Fisher’s death six years ago, Lourd’s fallen “deeply in love” with both Leia (she played a young version of her in a subtle cameo in 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, in addition to portraying Lieutenant Connix in The Force Awakens) and the entire Star Wars universe. She’s even started to share that with her two young children.

“I feel so lucky that, even though they won’t get to meet my mom, they will get to meet a piece of her through Leia,” she said, tearing up. “And I will get to tell them that the little lady in the TV is my mommy, their grandmommy.”

Lourd, too, honored her mother beyond her famous performance as Princess Leia.

“She was an incredible actress who infused her wit and strength into every character she played,” she said. “From her first role at only 16 years old in Shampoo, to her last role in Catastrophe. She was a closted quadruple threat. She could sing, she could dance, she could act, and she was an absolutely beyond brilliant writer.

“Leia is more than just a character; she’s a feeling. She is strength, she is grace, she is wit. She is femininity at its finest.

“From her texts to her Twitter to the notes she wrote me to get out of school to her scripts to the seven books she wrote, I have never known anyone wittier. She said it best in one of her legendary tweets: ‘I’m not only doing my best. I’m doing a bunch of yours as well.’ “

“Her books and candor about her mental illness and drug abuse have inspired people around the world to speak more openly about their struggles,” she continued. “It’s one of the things about her I’m most proud of. One of my favorite quotes of hers was, ‘Take your broken heart and make it into art.’ And she did just that, and I hope to pass that torch – or in this case, lightsaber – of wisdom onto the next generation of fans. Take your broken heart and make it into art. My mom was glitter. She covered her world in it both literally and metaphorically. She left a mark of her sparkle on everyone she met.”

Watch the full ceremony and Hamill and Lourd’s speeches here.

Alex Stedman is a Senior News Editor with IGN, overseeing entertainment reporting. When she’s not writing or editing, you can find her reading fantasy novels or playing Dungeons & Dragons.