'Like John Lennon' Star Wars Mark Hamill pays emotional tribute to late pal Carrie Fisher
WITH Carrie Fisher’s last Star Wars film set to be released in cinemas next month co-star Mark Hamill has paid an emotional tribute to the late actress, likening the impact of her death to that of John Lennon’s on The Beatles.
“She’s irreplaceable.
"It’s like every fan was dreaming of the day that The Beatles would reunite and then we lost John.
"It’s just unbearably sad,” says the 66-year-old who came to prominence as Luke Skywalker, making his first appearance in 1977’s Star Wars: A New Hope.
“In a way Star Wars is about great triumph and great tragedy and I can’t think of a greater tragedy than missing our Leia.”
GETTY
Related articles
Carrie, who of course portrayed Princess Leia in the franchise, died in December 2016 at the age of 60 from cardiac arrest, just after filming her Last Jedi scenes.
Meanwhile another of Carrie and Mark’s co-stars, Oscar Issac, who plays Poe Dameron, believes the timing of Carrie’s death has a particular poignancy, saying: “I think there is a sense that she understands – this is the character in the film – and I think the mirroring to life is uncanny, that she’s not going to be around for ever.”
Star War Wars: The Last Jedi is out in the UK on December 15.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
There's no place like home...
As she gets set to play Judy Garland in an upcoming biopic, Renée Zellweger kept it simple in a black dress and silver shoes ahead of a charity bash in the US.
GETTY
The 48-year-old Bridget Jones star will take on the lead role in Judy, which centres on the late star’s five-week run at the Talk Of The Town nightclub in London in 1968, during which time she also met her fifth husband, musician Mickey Deans, and a year before taking a fatal overdose aged 47.
Filming for Judy, which is being made by British stage director and Tony Award nominee Rupert Goold, is set to start next year.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Donny Osmond takes a break as he hits 60
Workaholic singer Donny Osmond has cancelled all his December engagements as he prepares to turn 60 this month – and he’s putting long-suffering wife Debbie, 58, first for a change.
Donny, whose big day is December 9, says:” I’m just about to join the 60 club this year.
"You know what I did? [My sister] Marie and I have a Christmas tour tradition every year.
"But my wife and I started talking.
"I said, ‘You know, I don’t want to be on tour for my 60th birthday.
GETTY
"I don’t want to be in some theatre.
"I just want to be with you.’
"So I cancelled the tour.
"Nobody was very happy about that but I cancelled the tour.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Liz Hurley hits 100,000 club
LIZ HURLEY has celebrated getting 100,000 Instagram followers – by posing in a swimming costume of course.
Seemingly on her seven billionth holiday of the year the globe-trotting 52-year-old donned the bronze number and captioned the picture: “Yay! 100k followers,” after reaching the, erm, significant social media milestone.
The sometime actress has been doing 16-hour days while filming The Royals over the summer so her latest soirée in the sand is perhaps more deserved than most.
While no doubt short of admirers the mum-of-one recently said she was too busy for a relationship, saying: “When I’m filming I don’t go out at all.
"Not at all.
"I walk in the door and go straight to bed.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bruce Dickinson gives a Maiden speech
Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson disputes that heavy metal is necessarily a working-class genre – because he believes music should be classless.
GETTY
“I’m not sure you can allocate any style of music to a particular class,” says the 59-year-old who attended the prestigious Oundle boarding school in Northamptonshire.
“You would imagine that punk was terribly working-class but it was actually quite full of posh people at the top end of a lot of punk bands,” he adds.
“I’m not one to start class warfare in music.
"Class warfare is one thing that I would be eager to avoid in any way, shape or form because it is rubbish.
GETTY
"People are people, their backgrounds are very varied.
"Money shouldn’t or doesn’t enter into it unless people want it to.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lionel Richie and Gloria Estefan honoured at Kennedy Centre
Pop royalty was well represented in the form of Lionel Richie and Gloria Estefan who were among the recipients at the 40th annual Kennedy Centre honours over the weekend.
Looking poised alongside US secretary of state Rex Tillerson, singers Lionel, 68, and Gloria, 60, were there to receive the awards which are handed to those in performing arts for lifetime contributions to American culture.
Five-time Grammy winner Lionel is one of the top-selling artists of all time with 100 million records sold worldwide while Gloria is a seven-time Grammy award winner who has sold more than 30million records in the US alone.
