Throughout her career, Jodie Foster has brought to life some of the most iconic characters and has turned down the offer to embody some other fan-favorite characters as well.
An actress cum filmmaker who has achieved a lot more than just accolades like the Academy Awards, she has been quite a real-life Disney princess too — something that eventually ended up making her turn down one notable role from the Star Wars franchise.
As it turns out, back in the 1970s, Foster was offered to bring the character of Princess Leia. However, she ended up turning the iconic role down, only to go and do the Disney Christmas movie Candleshoe instead.
Yet, she didn’t do it without proper reasoning behind it. In fact, if anything, she had more than one reason to reject the role!
Why Jodie Foster Chose Candleshoe Over Star Wars
Although she began acting at the age of 3 in 1965 in advertisements, Jodie Foster didn’t win her breakthrough role until a decade later, at the age of 13, as Iris Steensma in Taxi Driver.
Thanks to her awe-strucking performance in the movie, she was one of the biggest hotshots in the industry by a little after the mid-1970s. That was when she was offered to star as Princess Leia in the first-ever Star Wars film, Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope.
As she confirmed during a recent appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon:
“I was [offered the role of Princess Leia], yeah, and they were going for a younger, you know, Princess Leia.”
However, at the same time, when the offer was made to her, Foster was already working on Disney’s 1977 comedy adventure Christmas film, Candleshoe. Thus, she had to turn down the role. As she continued to explain the reason why:
“I had a conflict. I was doing a Disney movie [Candleshoe] and I just didn’t want to pull out of the Disney movie because I was already under contract, so I didn’t do it.”
Moreover, Disney didn’t own Lucasfilm back when the original Star Wars film was in the making, and thus, just couldn’t release her contract to let her do a movie for another studio when she was a raging hotshot in Hollywood.
Yet, even as she was unable to take on the iconic role herself, Jodie Foster didn’t step back from praising the actress who stepped into the character instead of her, i.e., the late Carrie Fisher.
Jodie Foster Believes Lucasfilm “Did An Amazing Job” Even Without Her
While the above-listed factors posed a problem for Jodie Foster to take on the role of Princess Leia, there was something else as well that would have proved to be somewhat of a nuisance had she been cast: Foster’s age figure.
Back when she was offered the role, presumably by the mid-1970s, the Nyad actress wouldn’t have been more than 13 or 14 years old, considering how she was 15 when Episode IV – A New Hope released in the theatres.
This would have posed a problem for them as Princess Leia couldn’t be shown that young. As for Carrie Fisher, she was 19 when she got cast in the role, which was more appropriate considering her onscreen character was somewhere in her late teens as well.
This was why casting Fisher was a better option than Foster. And even the actress agreed to this as she said:
“And they did an amazing job,” Foster said. “I don’t know how good I would have been. I might have had different hair. I might have gone with a pineapple.”
Thus, even though all these reasons stopped the world from witnessing Jodie Foster in the shoes of Princess Leia, the late Carrie Fisher did an equally remarkable job as the character, which is a good enough reason to let go of the desire to see Foster in the role.
