Carrie Fisher: actor best known as Princess Leia dies aged 60

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/dec/27/carrie-fisher-dies-star-wars-princess-leia

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Carrie Fisher, the actor best known for her portrayal of Princess Leia in the Star Wars films and for her unflinching self-honesty that contrasted with the artifice of Hollywood celebrity, has died in Los Angeles. She was 60 years old.

Her death came days after she was reported to have suffered a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles last Friday. The news was confirmed in a statement released on behalf of her daughter Billie Lourd who said she was “loved by the world” and “will be profoundly missed”.

Fisher’s career was characterized by her willingness to acknowledge, challenge and satirize the stereotypes of her upbringing and privilege. As daughter of two Hollywood stars, Debbie Reynolds and the late singer Eddie Fisher, she brought awareness and humor to her work, whether in film or in numerous books that tracked and reviewed her fortunes in life – or what she herself had termed “what it’s like to live an all-too-exciting life”.

Paying tribute to her daughter, her mother Debbie Reynolds, now 84, described her as “amazing”. She wrote on Facebook: “Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter. I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop. Love Carries Mother”.

Among the first to react to her death was also Mark Hamill, who starred as Luke Skywalker alongside Fisher in the Star Wars films. He tweeted “no words # Devastated” and a photograph of them together in character.

no words #Devastated pic.twitter.com/R9Xo7IBKmh

Earlier, announcing her death in Los Angeles, Billie Lourd’s publicist said: “It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8.55 this morning. She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly. Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers.”

She had experienced medical trouble during a flight from London on Friday and was treated by paramedics immediately after the plane landed in Los Angeles, according to reports. Celebrity website TMZ, which first reported Fisher was unwell, had cited anonymous sources claiming the actor suffered a heart attack. Her daughter, however, later told the AP that many details about her condition or what caused the medical emergency remain unknown.

Fisher had shot to stardom when the original Star Wars was released in 1977, a movie that changed Hollywood and a franchise that continues to captivate new audiences around the world. She revisited the role as the leader of a galactic rebellion in three sequels, including last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

Fisher was though far more than Princess Leia and was also celebrated for her comedic accounts, sometimes semi-fictionalized, of life in celebrity fishbowl of Hollywood and her personal struggles.

Her screenplay Postcards from the Edge, which dealt candidly with issues of mental health and addiction, was adapted into a 1990 film version starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep.

Earlier this year, Fisher was honored by Harvard College, which awarded her its annual outstanding lifetime achievement award in cultural humanism in recognition of her “bravely honest” literary career.

More books followed: Delusions of Grandma, Surrender the Pink, The Best Awful, Shockaholic and this year’s autobiography, The Princess Diarist, in which she revealed that she and co-star Harrison Ford had an affair on the set of Star Wars.

Ever ready to satirize herself, she has even played “Carrie Fisher” a few times, as in David Cronenberg’s dark Hollywood sendup Maps to the Stars and in an episode of Sex and the City.

In the past 15 years, Fisher also had a somewhat prolific career as a television guest star, recently in the Amazon show Catastrophe as the mother of Rob Delaney’s lead, and perhaps most memorably as a has-been comedy legend on 30 Rock.

Her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, which she had performed on and off across the country since 2006, was turned into a book, made its way to Broadway in 2009 and was captured for HBO in 2010.

Little was off-limits in the show. She discussed the scandal that engulfed her superstar parents, Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher (he ran off with Elizabeth Taylor); her brief marriage to singer Paul Simon; the time the father of her daughter left her for a man; and the day she woke up next to the dead body of a platonic friend who had overdosed in her bed.

“I’m a product of Hollywood inbreeding. When two celebrities mate, something like me is the result,” she said in the show. At another point, she cracked: “I don’t have a problem with drugs so much as I have a problem with sobriety.”

“People relate to aspects of my stories and that’s nice for me because then I’m not all alone with it,” she said. “Also, I do believe you’re only as sick as your secrets. If that’s true, I’m just really healthy.”

Her latest book, The Princess Diarist, was well-received, and made news when she disclosed that she and co-star Harrison Ford had an affair on the set of Star Wars.

Fisher had also recently started writing an advice column published in the Guardian. One reader wrote to her seeking advice for dealing with bipolar disorder, which Fisher also had. Fisher commended the reader for asking for help and said: “you reached out to me – that took courage. Now build on that”.

Fisher was born in Beverly Hills, California, in 1956, to her Hollywood royalty parents. When Fisher was two years old, her father, Eddie Fisher, left the family for the film star Elizabeth Taylor, the widow of her father’s best friend Mike Todd. The following year, her mother, Debbie Reynolds, married Harry Karl, owner of a shoe-store chain.

Fisher made her film debut in the 1975 comedy Shampoo starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn. Two years later she was picked to play Princess Leia in George Lucas’s science-fiction film Star Wars alongside Ford.Other roles followed, but none that came close to matching the attention she received for the sci-fi series.

Additional reporting by the Associated Press.