Jodie Foster turned down the role of Princess Leia in Star Wars (she was 13 at the time)

Imagine how different the world might have been if Jodie Foster — the iconic actor famous for movies like The Silence of the Lambs, Nell, and Taxi Driver — had played Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies rather than Carrie Fisher. As Foster revealed on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, she actually was offered the part for the original Star Wars movie, but couldn't do it.

“I was, yeah. They were going for a younger Princess Leia but 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.”

"I don’t know how good I would have been. I might have had different hair. I might have gone with a pineapple."

Princess Leia's hair, particularly in that first movie, is iconic, like she just took a couple of buns out of the oven and stuck them on the sides of her head. Pineapple would have been a good option, too.

Foster mentions that, at first, the producers of Star Wars wanted a "younger" Princess Leia. At the time Star Wars came out in 1977, Foster was 14 years old, and would have been younger when she filmed the part. Fisher, by contrast, was 19 years old when she shot the first Star Wars movie. Having a younger actor in the role would have changed the vibe, since (we hope) there would have been fewer romantic undertones to the early interplay between Luke and Leia, and maybe no romance with Han Solo in the next movie, The Empire Strikes Back. Who knows how else that would have changed things?

As for the Disney movie Foster was doing at the time she was offered the role of Princess Leia, it can only be Candleshoe, where she plays a street-smart foster child recruited to pose as the missing granddaughter of a wealthy woman as part of a scheme to find a cache of long-lost pirate gold.

Candleshoe very much did not have the staying power of Star Wars, but Foster did alright regardless. You can see her now as grizzled detective Liz Danvers in True Detective: Night Country on HBO:

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