Award-winning actress Jodie Foster said that she almost played Princess Leia in Star Wars in the late 1970s but had to turn it down due to a scheduling conflict.
The Silence of the Lambs star confirmed the opportunity on NBC’s Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday.
"I had a conflict, I was doing a Disney movie and I just didn't want to pull out of the Disney movie because I was already under contract. So I didn't do it," Foster explained.
The late Carrie Fisher landed the role in George Lucas' epic space opera, which released Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope in theaters in 1977. During that year, Foster starred in Candleshoe as Casey Brown, an orphan who's recruited to search for a long-lost treasure hidden in a home in England.
The 61-year old actress said that Leia's iconic hairstyle ("space buns") might have been different had she played the character.
"And they did an amazing job. I don't know how good I would have been. And I might have had different hair, you know? I might have gone with a pineapple," Foster joked.
Other actors have been linked to the role of Princess Leia, including Anjelica Huston, Meryl Streep, Sigourney Weaver and Sissy Spacek. However, during a 2015 interview with The Daily Beast, Fisher said that she wasn't aware of speculation that she beat Streep for the iconic role.
"I've never heard that one. But Jodie Foster was up for it... That one I knew the most. Amy Irving and Jodie. And I got it," Fisher said.
Who else played Princess Leia in Star Wars?
Vivien Lyra Blair starred as the young Leia in the hit Disney+ series, Obi-Wan Kenobi, where she joined Ewan McGregor to feature a previously unseen chapter in the life of the Jedi Master. However, if Season 2 of the show is confirmed, it looks like Blair likely won't return.
“I would love to, but I was saying like, I don’t see how I would fit into it,” she told The Direct. “Because it’s very implied that she doesn’t see him again until she asked for help in the fourth movie, A New Hope. And so, I think it’s kind of like, how would I fit into that?”
