It started when I was about 7 years old. I sat on a beige carpet between my friend Sam and his little brother, eyes glued to the TV screen in front of us, watching a woman in a gold bikini strangle Jabba the Hutt. We’d already made our way through the first and second films in the Star Wars trilogy, and Carrie Fisher’s Princess Leia had us enraptured as she vanquished her slug-like captor.When the film ended, we went into the garden and soaked each other with water pistols (although we’d have preferred them to be lightsabers). I twisted my wet hair into bunches to stop it dripping over my clothes, and that’s when Sam said to me: “You remind me of Princess Leia.” OK, so he was probably just talking about the way I’d twisted up my hair but, even as a child, to me it meant so much more; that I was just as tough as the boys.I can see now that Leia was my first feminist role model, and when I rewatch the films I always enjoy how, the first time you hear Leia speak, she’s arguing with Darth Vader and refusing to tell him what she’s done with his precious Death Star plans, despite being surrounded by gun-toting Stormtroopers. She’s statuesque in her trademark white robe and self-assured in her mission to save her planet.There are other moments in the films when her character’s frustration with stereotypical male bravado is subtly highlighted; when she meets Han Solo, it isn’t love at first sight, and when Leia, Han and Luke Skywalker are attempting to escape from the Death Star, she chides Han for “not having a plan for getting out”, before rolling her eyes, grabbing Luke’s gun and shooting them a new escape route.Carrie Fisher pulled this off perfectly. Her audition tape for the part of Princess Leia shows she knew from the off how she wanted to enact the character. She delivered her lines with that delicious hint of exasperation that defined Leia, that hung off every word in one of her most famous rebuttals to Han Solo: “Why, you stuck-up, half-witted, scruffy-looking, nerf herder!”