Carrie Fisher Was Shocked!

New York City - 1980

Carrie Fisher, or Princess Leia Organa to some, was on the balcony, getting hair and make-up done. I was in her beautiful apartment on the Upper West Side on the edge of New York’s Central Park. This was early 1980, and I had recently moved from London to New York.

I was with Carrie on this day to shoot her for a US magazine. I don’t recall meeting her before, but I might have done very briefly with Paul Simon at an event.

It was a freezing but very bright winter day with a vibrant blue sky. It felt warm as soon as I arrived, inside her apartment and everyone was extremely nice. Carrie was very chatty, lovely, and funny.

So, whilst she was being pampered and prepared (hair, makeup, etc.) for what I thought would be a straightforward shoot, I was in the kitchen, leaning against the worktop and chatting to a perfectly lovely old chap. The place is full of people, many of whom I'm aware of as pretty famous. Suddenly, in pops Art Garfunkel, and at one point, actor Richard Dreyfuss and a bit later, her future husband, Paul Simon, too, from apartments upstairs or downstairs or wherever they lived. All the while, I'm scanning for a photo opportunity out of the corner of my eye (as I usually do), but still nattering away to this chap, notably much older than my 21 years and probably quite a bit older than most others in the apartment. We talked about London, which he knew well, and photography, music and bands I was working with.  We shared stories about the London scene and the people in it. After all, London was my real home and where I was born. Then he stopped suddenly and asked me if I'd do him a favour:

"Can you call this number for me?" he says, passing me a note with a number I recognised as a 305 Florida area code. I knew this because I was working a bit with Andy Gibb brother of Brothers Gibb (The Bee Gees), who was living in Miami.

I don't ask him what his last slave died of, but I take the number. "If a woman answers, ask if it's Debbie."