Actor Mark Hamill was amazed when his Star Wars co-star Carrie Fisher announced she'd had a drug problem on the set of the sci-fi trilogy - because she was his girlfriend and he didn't know.

Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker opposite Fisher's PRINCESS LEIA, was "very close" to the actress, yet didn't know she was battling an addiction to cocaine when the blockbuster movies were filmed in the late '70s and early '80s.

He says, "When she came out with that, it was news to me.

"We were very close on the first film, like girlfriend and boyfriend. She was only 19 and I was an emotionally young 24. But by the time the film came out the next summer (1977), it had cooled. I had started seeing other people and so had she.

"Then we started working on THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK. I was married and she was seeing Paul Simon. From then on, there was absolutely no romance at all."

21/06/2004 15:02