It’s always been pretty obvious that George Lucas made Star Wars up as he went along. Come on, Luke starts out as a wide-eyed farm boy and ends up as a dead-eyed Jedi. Darth Vader begins as a shiny black death cyborg villain and somehow winds up as Luke’s dear old wet-eyed dad. Let’s not even mention Leia going from love interest to sibling, because if it hadn’t been for the Force, this might have been the weirdest movie since Close My Eyes.
All of which makes the revelation that Jodie Foster was once offered the role of Leia Organa all the more intriguing. Speaking to Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show, Foster revealed this week that she turned down the opportunity to star in 1977’s blockbuster gamechanger because she would have had to break a contract for a Disney movie (almost certainly 1976’s Freaky Friday) filmed during the same period.
