The following story contains major spoilers for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Stop reading now if you have yet to see the film. For real. Stop.
In the final moments of Gareth Edwards' Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the plans for the Death Star are being passed through the hands of numerous Rebel soldiers as a vengeful Darth Vader tries to mow them all down. He fails, and the plans end up in the hands of Princess Leia, who says that the Rebellion now has "Hope." A New Hope. Get it? The digital effect used to bring Princess Leia back to "life" on screen is shocking, and a little jarring, even after seeing the late Peter Cushing resuscitated via cutting-edge CGI to once again play Grand Moff Tarkin. However, it turns out there is an actual human stand in for the Leia scene, and now we know who that is:
Norwegian actress Ingvild Deila took to Twitter to reveal that she had been sitting on a secret for a long period of time, and couldn't reveal it until now, finally announcing that she was Princess Leia in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Needless to say, it's a very (very) short scene, and I'm not sure that you can call it a performance. We spend most of the time looking at the face of young Leia, wondering how they digitally placed Carrie Fisher's visage on someone else's body. In fact, until I learned this, I just assumed the whole body was CGI, but now we know that Deila is the one who stood in for Fisher and brought Princess Leia back to the screen. Normally, Ingvild Deila looks like this:
Though she also had a bit part (a very bit part) in a scene from Marvel's Avengers: Age of Ultron. So yeah, she has been working. To bad that in this, the movie more people will see than all of her other movies combined, we can't even see her face.
MoviePilot has a pretty good breakdown of the work that went into recreating young Leia, noting that its similar to the process used to de-age Tony Stark in Captain America: Civil War, and to bring Paul Walker into unfinished scenes for Furious 7. Technology is improving by leaps and bounds, though there are some in the industry who already are arguing that bringing back deceased actors through digital likenesses is a moral violation. How much more complicated will this issue become in the years to come?
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is in theaters as we speak.
