E.T. Secretly Played Princess Leia

Interestingly, the franchises had another link before that, one that was meant to be more of a winking nod between filmmakers than anything else. In E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, there is a scene where the titular alien sees a child dressed as Yoda and begins saying “home” in Pat Welsh’s unique voice.

E.T. director Steven Spielberg and Star Wars creator George Lucas are good friends, so this scene was Spielberg’s way of acknowledging his colleague’s successful franchise while also giving characters and audiences a very explicit hint that this little alien wanted to return to the stars.

At the time, nobody expected that scene to be any kind of canonical connection between the two franchises before making the Pat Welsh connection. Nonetheless, George Lucas included a group of E.T.-like aliens in The Phantom Menace as members of the Galactic Senate. 

This retroactively made E.T. part of the Star Wars universe and implied that he actually knew Yoda, and some fans speculated that the aliens’ various powers meant that he was secretly a Jedi. As for Lucas, he was basically paying Spielberg back for including various Star Wars Easter eggs in his films that ranged from Yoda in E.T. to the club in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom being named Club Obi-Wan.

With all that being said, the franchises already had a very strong connection by 1983. That’s because Pat Welsh, who so memorably provided the voice for E.T., also voiced Leia when she was in the Boushh disguise and infiltrating Jabba the Hutt’s palace. Boushh secretly being Leia was meant to be a big reveal, and Welsh did a great job providing a voice so alien that nobody expected to see Leia under that mask.

Pat Welsh was personally chosen by George Lucas to voice Leia in the Boushh disguise based on her killer performance in E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial because he loved the way she sounded. As for Welsh, she had risen to prominence as a radio actor way back in the ‘40s. Aside from appearing uncredited in Waterloo Bridge in 1940, her only feature film roles were providing the voices for E.T. and Leia.

To this day, Pat Welsh’s contribution to Star Wars has gone largely unknown because she went uncredited in Return of the Jedi as well as E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial. Sadly, she passed away in 1995, meaning that she never got to see the alien she helped make famous appear (or at least, his people appear) in a galaxy far, far away.

There’s no time like the present to acknowledge her amazing cinematic contributions, and today, we’re raising our lightsabers in salute to this silver-screen legend who secretly played the most famous princess in Hollywood.