She may have been framed by the tail of slobbering Jabba the Hutt, but the moment Carrie Fisher appeared with that gold bikini and headset hair-do, she became one of Hollywood’s most hailed beauties of all time.

There was only one person who didn’t see it, and that was Princess Leia herself.

Today, as Carrie returns to the role almost 40 years on – now as the mature General Leia – she reveals she feels far from a fantasy figure, and always did.

Scathingly frank about her appearance in the hotly anticipated blockbuster Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, she says: “I look melted and I look my age.

“Unfortunately, I don’t want to look my age. I would do everything but have serious surgery for it and look like a weird fish with gills.”

Now 59, the Hollywood pin-up says she has been dogged by an emphasis on appearance throughout her career.

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Carrie says: “Appearances are treated like, you know, something; an accomplishment. Look, your parents had sex and they were both good-looking. Great for you.”

Read more:Why isn't Luke Skywalker in the trailers?

She laughs: “Mine were good-looking and they had sex, and then it ended.” And despite being one of the biggest female icons of our time, she’s still insecure about her looks.

“My physical self and I are not friends. We’re not speaking and I’m ignoring especially my arms lately,” she says. “I’ve never liked my appearance.” The star says she’s yo-yo dieted since her teens and quips she’s a “failed bulimic”, envious of her actress mum Debbie Reynolds’ figure.

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Carrie says she felt compelled to lose weight for her debut as Leia in the first Star Wars film, in 1977. At 5ft 1in she weighed 7st 7lbs, yet says she lost 10lbs. And she claimed last week she had to lose weight this time around, too, dieting away 2st 7lbs for The Force Awakens.

Speaking to us in LA, she adds to the claim: “They want to hire me three-quarters of myself. And they were right.”

But despite her self-criticism, she knows the industry is in the wrong.

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Along with the likes of actresses Jennifer Lawrence and Lena Dunham, Carrie feels Hollywood is still far away from being an example of equal rights. Asked if Hollywood’s attitude to female roles is evolving, she says if it is, “it’s so slow that you can’t see it happening”.

She goes on: “And if we’re still talking about it and saying are we evolving, we’re probably not evolving that much. When you don’t have to ask me that question is when we’ll be OK.”

Being back on the Star Wars set has been like turning back the clock, having last played Leia 32 years ago in Return of the Jedi. It has also meant reuniting with co-stars Harrison Ford, as Han Solo, and Mark Hamill, as Luke Skywalker.

“It was like being on campus again,” Carrie says. “When I first got there I was in my trailer and I heard Harrison’s footstep. I still know that sound.”

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Of course, with being back on set comes another hairstyle. And the new one, which we are yet to see fully, is apparently even more eye-catching than the infamous buns. Carrie jokes: “I have a new hair style, very briefly, but it reminds me of a baboon ass.”

It’s not that she’s ungrateful. The eccentric actress – who’s lately taken to giving interviews with her pet dog Gary – gushes about her fans. “They’re so loyal that there should be another word for it, so it’s very sweet,” she says.

And she knows Leia launched her career when she took on the role at the age of 19. “I wonder who I would have been without it,” she says.

But the actress has lived a far bigger life than Leia. And going up against the Empire was nothing compared with her real-life battles, including divorced Hollywood parents, drug addiction – shared, literally, with her father – two failed marriages, with her second husband leaving her for a man, mental health issues and electric shock therapy.

Carrie’s life story reads like a book, and it has formed the basis of a number of her novels and a one-woman play.

Her crooner dad Eddie Fisher left her mum for Elizabeth Taylor, becoming the star’s fourth husband in 1959 when Carrie was just 18 months old.

Debbie had been matron of honour at Taylor’s wedding to third husband Mike Todd, and Eddie was Todd’s best man.

(Image: Lucas Film Ltd)

When film producer Todd died in a plane crash in 1958, Debbie sent her husband to console Taylor – and that was that. Carrie says: “I asked Elizabeth years later why she’d loved my father, and she said, ‘We kept Mike alive’.

“They both loved Mike, so they grieved together. Just with no clothes on.”

Carrie now claims she was the one to help make amends between Taylor and Debbie, who last month received an Oscar for her humanitarian work.

She says: “Yeah, I became friends with Liz and then my mother became friends with her again.

“I think initially Elizabeth thought my mother was more of a goody two-shoes. Perhaps she was when she was 17, but she swears like a sailor now, which is I think what healed her. Did the late Taylor learn any lessons? “Yes, not to steal my father from my mother,” Carrie laughs. Taylor later left Eddie for Richard Burton, while Eddie married three more times.

Carrie remains close to her mother, who lives next door to her, but her bond with her absentee dad was more complicated. They were close until his death in 2010 aged 82, but had a bizarre relationship, taking drugs together.

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She says he was a “good person, terrible father. He was hilarious and a darling, a child, a boy. He wasn’t a man at all.” The star adds: “Since we were both druggies, we did drugs together.”

Carrie’s addiction began when she was 23, a few years after her student days at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London and her film debuts in comedy Shampoo, alongside Warren Beatty and Julie Christie, and later Star Wars.

“Then it was flat out till I was 28,” Carrie has said previously. “I did drugs because they alter you in a way you can’t alter yourself if you’re not comfortable in your own skin.”

She has admitted snorting cocaine on the set of ice planet Hoth during filming for The Empire Strikes Back. “I didn’t even like coke that much, it was just a case of getting on whatever train I needed to take to get high,” the star said.

Acid and painkillers were addictions, too. Rehab, stomach pumping and psychiatric hospital stays followed, along with depression and a battle with bipolar disorder after being diagnosed at 24.

(Image: Star Wars/YouTube/PA)

A one point she started having electric shock therapy, saying she needed it “every six weeks to blow apart the cement in my brain”.

Now, Carrie – who was last in hospital in 2013 – insists she’s in a good place, and has found ways to cope with bipolar disorder. “I’ve actually been in a good place for a while, but I have lived with this thing for a long time,” she says.

“I’ve learnt you need to find other people that have had more struggles. Find your tribe. Don’t wander around feeling different than everyone else – or do, but make it interesting.”

Her one regret is that daughter Billie Lourd, 23 – an actress in E4’s Scream Queens – has watched her go through it. She has previously said: “I’m not one for regrets, but I do regret anything I did that made life hard for my daughter.”

Carrie was married to musician Paul Simon for 12 years, then Billie’s dad Bryan Lourd. He left her for a man in 1994.

Despite her ups and downs, the actress still has a sharp sense of humour.

Talking about co-star Ford’s plane crash earlier this year, she says: “I offered to fly that day and he said no. Why is he doing these things, a man his age?

“I had lots of conversations with him but he doesn’t listen to me, can you believe it? Don’t I seem like a fount of advice?”

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And probed about her long friendships with Ford and Hamill, she says: “We’re bored with each other now.”

When you ask if she has advice for Star Wars’ British newcomer Daisy Ridley, 23, there’s a flash of insecurity.

“Daisy’s a really good actress, much better than I was, am, will be,” she says.

But then she reveals her pearl of wisdom: “I tell them not to go through the crew like wildfire.”