𝐉𝐨𝐞 𝐁𝐫𝐞𝐰𝐞𝐫-𝐋𝐞𝐧𝐧𝐨𝐧

Carrie Fisher was paid $850 a week to play Princess Leia. George Lucas owned her face. She was 19. She signed the contract, and with it the rights to her likeness. Then came the dolls. The action figures. The shampoo bottles. The Pez dispensers. Star Wars merchandise went on to make billions, and none of it was hers. Lucas later gave her a quarter of a percent of his own profits. By 1980, it was worth about $320,000. Alec Guinness got 2.25% of the profits on the same film. 28 years later, at Lucas’s lifetime achievement tribute, she stood at the podium and settled the score in front of all of Hollywood. She put it on the record: “You have owned my likeness all these years, so that every time I look in the mirror, I have to send you a check for a couple of bucks.” The room laughed. Lucas laughed. The case for Lucas: he took the risk, Fox laughed at him, and nobody knew it would be Star Wars. The case for Fisher: she was the face on the box, and the box made billions. Here’s the lesson: if you don’t own your name, someone else will sell it. In the video, she roasts him for four minutes. Watch her, then decide. Was she joking, or finally saying it out loud?