Carrie Fisher

Carrie Frances Fisher (October 21, 1956 – December 27, 2016) was an American actress and writer. She played Princess Leia in the original Star Wars films (1977–1983) and reprised the role in The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017)—a posthumous release that was dedicated to her—and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), the latter using unreleased footage from The Force Awakens. Her other film credits include Shampoo (1975), The Blues Brothers (1980), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The 'Burbs (1989), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Soapdish (1991), and The Women (2008). She was nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her performances in the NBC sitcom 30 Rock (2007) and the Channel 4 series Catastrophe (2017).

Fisher wrote several semi-autobiographical novels, including Postcards from the Edge, "The Best Awful", an autobiographical one-woman play, and its nonfiction book, Wishful Drinking, based on the play. She wrote the screenplay for the film version of Postcards from the Edge which garnered her a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and her one-woman stage show of Wishful Drinking received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special. She worked on other writers' screenplays as a script doctor, including tightening the scripts for Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992), The Wedding Singer (1998), and many of the films from the Star Wars franchise, among others. An Entertainment Weekly article from May 1992 described Fisher as "one of the most sought-after doctors in town."

Fisher was the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. She and her mother appear together in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, a documentary about their relationship. It premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. She earned praise for speaking publicly about her experiences with bipolar disorder and drug addiction. Fisher died of a sudden cardiac arrest in December 2016, at age 60, four days after experiencing a medical emergency during a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles. She was posthumously made a Disney Legend in 2017, and was awarded a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album the following year. In 2023, she posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Early life

Carrie Frances Fisher was born on October 21, 1956, at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, to actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher. Fisher's paternal grandparents were Russian-Jewish immigrants, while her mother, who was raised a Nazarene, was of English and Scots-Irish descent.

Fisher was two years old when her parents divorced in 1959 after it was revealed, shortly following the death of Elizabeth Taylor's husband, Mike Todd, that Eddie Fisher had been having an affair with her. Eddie Fisher and Taylor married that same year and divorced in 1964. Her father's third marriage, to actress Connie Stevens, resulted in the births of Fisher's two half-sisters, Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher. In 1960, her mother married Harry Karl, owner of a chain of shoe stores. Reynolds and Karl divorced in 1973 when Fisher was 17 years old.

Fisher "hid in books" as a child, becoming known in her family as "the bookworm". She spent her earliest years reading classic literature and writing poetry. She attended Beverly Hills High School until age 16, when she appeared as a debutante and singer in the hit Broadway revival Irene (1973), also starring her mother. Her time on Broadway interfered with her education, resulting in her dropping out of high school. In 1973, she enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, which she attended for 18 months. Following her time there, she was accepted at Sarah Lawrence College, where she planned to study the arts. She later left without graduating.

Career

1970s

Fisher made her film debut in 1975 as the precociously seductive character Lorna Karpf in the Columbia Pictures comedy Shampoo, filmed in mid-1974, when she was age 17. In 1977, Fisher starred as Princess Leia in George Lucas' space opera film Star Wars (later retitled Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope) opposite Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford. Though she and her fellow actors were not close at the time, they bonded after the commercial success of the film.

In April 1978, Fisher appeared as the love interest in Ringo Starr's 1978 TV special Ringo. The next month, she starred alongside John Ritter (who had also appeared in Ringo) in the ABC-TV film Leave Yesterday Behind. At this time, Fisher appeared with Laurence Olivier and Joanne Woodward in the anthology series Laurence Olivier Presents in a television version of the William Inge play Come Back, Little Sheba. That November, she played Princess Leia in the 1978 TV production Star Wars Holiday Special, and sang in the last scene.

1980s

Fisher appeared in the film The Blues Brothers as Jake's vengeful ex-lover; she is listed in the credits as "Mystery Woman". While Fisher was in Chicago filming the movie, she choked on a Brussels sprout; Dan Aykroyd performed the Heimlich maneuver which "saved my life", according to Fisher. She appeared on Broadway in Censored Scenes from King Kong in 1980. The same year, she reprised her role as Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back, and appeared with her Star Wars co-stars on the cover of the July 12, 1980, issue of Rolling Stone to promote the film. She also starred as Sister Agnes in the Broadway production of Agnes of God in 1983, a run which overlapped with her mother's appearance in the Broadway company of Woman of the Year.

In 1983, Fisher returned to the role of Princess Leia in Return of the Jedi, and posed in the character's metal bikini on the cover of the Summer 1983 issue of Rolling Stone to promote the film. The costume later achieved a following of its own. In 1986, she starred along with Barbara Hershey and Mia Farrow in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters.

In 1987, Fisher published her first novel, Postcards from the Edge. The book was semi-autobiographical in the sense that she fictionalized and satirized real-life events such as her drug addiction of the late 1970s and her relationship with her mother. It became a bestseller, and she received the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best First Novel. Also during 1987, she was in the Australian film The Time Guardian. In 1989, Fisher played a major supporting role in When Harry Met Sally..., and in the same year she appeared with Tom Hanks as his character's wife in The 'Burbs.

1990s

In 1990, Columbia Pictures released a film version of Postcards from the Edge, adapted for the screen by Fisher and starring Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, and Dennis Quaid. Fisher appeared in the fantasy comedy film Drop Dead Fred in 1991, and played a therapist in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997). During the 1990s, Fisher also published the novels Surrender the Pink (1990) and Delusions of Grandma (1993). Fisher wrote an episode of the television sitcom Roseanne entitled "Arsenic and Old Mom", in which her mother Debbie Reynolds made a guest appearance. Fisher also did uncredited script work for movies such as Lethal Weapon 3 (where she wrote some of Rene Russo's dialogue), Outbreak (also starring Russo), The Wedding Singer, and Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot.

2000s

In the 2000 film Scream 3, Fisher played a former actress who acknowledges she looks like Fisher, and in 2001 she played a nun in the Kevin Smith comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. She also co-wrote the TV comedy film These Old Broads (2001), of which she was also co-executive producer. It starred her mother Debbie Reynolds, as well as Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, and Shirley MacLaine. In 2003 Fisher played Mother Superior, another nun, in Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle.

In addition to acting and writing original works, Fisher was one of the top script doctors in Hollywood, working on the screenplays of other writers. She did uncredited polishes on movies in a 15-year stretch from 1991 to 2005. She was hired by George Lucas to polish scripts for his 1992 TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles and the dialogue for the Star Wars prequel scripts. Her expertise in this area was the reason she was chosen as one of the interviewers for the screenwriting documentary Dreams on Spec in 2007. In an interview in 2004, Fisher said she no longer did much script doctoring.

Fisher also voiced Peter Griffin's boss, Angela, on the animated sitcom Family Guy and wrote the introduction for a book of photographs titled Hollywood Moms, which was published in 2001. Fisher published a sequel to Postcards, The Best Awful There Is, in 2004. In 2005, Women in Film & Video – DC recognized Fisher with the Women of Vision Award.