On Tuesday, Carrie fisher, the iconic Princess Leia Organa of Star Wars, died in Los Angeles at the age of 60.
On behalf of Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd, family spokesman told People Magazine, “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.”
Last Friday, Fisher flew from London to Los Angeles. She went into cardiac arrest, prompting paramedics to transport her from LAX to UCLA Medical Center.
Fisher, the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds; traveled to the Central School of Speech and Drama in London in 1973, then returned to play a part in Warren Shampoo. Just a few years later, in 1976, at the age of 19, she played Leia in Star Wars, (released in 1977), revealing only in recent years that she had a torrid affair with Harrison Ford, who was married and 35 at the time.
Fisher also starred in the second and third Star Wars films, as well as 2015’s The Force Awakens. Other films included The Blues Brothers, The Man with One Red Shoe, Woody Allen’s Hannah and Her Sisters and When Harry Met Sally.
Fisher had a tumultuous personal life; she confessed she started smoking marijuana at 13; did heavy drugs, had a short-lived marriage to singer Paul Simon in 1983. She told the Herald-Tribune in 2013. “So I didn’t do other kinds of drugs until I was about 20. Then, by the time I was 21 it was LSD. I didn’t love cocaine, but I wanted to feel any way other than the way I did, so I’d do anything.”
By 1985, she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, later speaking out about mental health awareness.
Fisher authored the autobiographical Postcards from the Edge, later filmed, as well as Wishful Drinking, Surrender the Pink, The Best Awful, Shockaholic, Delusions of Grandma and The Princess Diarist. She had a successful career as a script doctor, working on films like The Wedding Singer, Hook and Sister Act.
Billie Lourd was born from the union of Fisher and talent agent Bryan Lourd. In 2008, Wishful Drinking became a one-woman stage show and later an HBO documentary.
Fisher had filmed scenes for the next Star Wars installment, Episode VIII, due out in December 2017. Fisher said of The Princess Diarist, drawn from Fisher’s old diaries and notebooks, “I had forgotten that I’d written them, and I’ve never written diaries sort of like that. I write when I’m upset … it was about two or three months of upset. It was sad because I was so insecure, and it’s very raw and obviously I didn’t expect anyone — including myself, I suppose later on — to read it.”