Carrie Fisher says she feels terrible for drawing attention to Harrison Ford's private life in her new memoir by going public with their affair on the set of the first Star Wars movie.
The 60-year-old actress claimed she had an "intense" affair with 74-year-old Ford during the making of the first Star Wars film in 1976.
Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy and who also appears in JJ Abrams reboot of the franchise, revealed she was 19- years-old when she had a three-month romance with the Han Solo star, then a 33-year-old married father of two, which she kept secret for 40 years.
"I'm surprised at the reaction...," she explained on U.S. breakfast show Today. "I don't think it (the affair) is that surprising. A lot of fans did think about it for a while and they made up 'Carrison' as a word (for the couple) and (asked), 'Is Carrison real?' So that was going on for a while."
The "intense" romance reveal was all the more controversial because it suggested Harrison had cheated on his then-wife Mary Marquardt, the mother of two of his kids.
Fisher gave Ford a heads up about her memoir, but he has yet to publicly comment on the affair - and the actress has a feeling the famously low-key star doesn't appreciate the unwanted attention.
"He's incredibly private," she said. "I feel really bad doing that to him."
Fisher insists she isn't proud of the affair, adding: "I wasn't raised that way," she insisted. "But when you're on location, this is something I discovered, everything is permitted."
She also claims reading her old diary entries didn't exactly fill her with joy, either: "It was sad because I was so insecure (as a teen) and it's very raw," she shared. "Obviously I didn't expect anyone, including myself I suppose, to read it (years later)."
