LOS ANGELES \u2014 Carrie Fisher, the daughter of Hollywood royalty who played Princess Leia in the original \u201cStar Wars\u201d and turned her experiences with addiction and mental illness into bestselling books, a hit film and popular stage performances, died Tuesday after suffering a medical emergency aboard a flight on Friday. She was 60.<\/p>\n
Her daughter, Billie Lourd, released a statement through her spokesman announcing Fisher\u2019s death.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning,\u201d read the statement from publicist Simon Halls. \u201cShe was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fisher, the daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds and crooner Eddie Fisher, had been hospitalized since Friday, when paramedics responded to a patient in distress at Los Angeles International Airport. Fisher\u2019s family said she was in intensive care Friday evening.<\/p>\n
She made her feature film debut opposite Warren Beatty in the 1975 hit \u201cShampoo.\u201d She also appeared in \u201cAustin Powers,\u201d \u2018\u2019The Blues Brothers,\u201d \u2018\u2019Charlie\u2019s Angels,\u201d \u2018\u2019Hannah and Her Sisters,\u201d \u2018\u2019Scream 3\u201d and \u201cWhen Harry Met Sally …\u201d<\/p>\n
But Fisher is best remembered as the tough, feisty and powerful Princess Leia in the original \u201cStar Wars\u201d in 1977, uttering the immortal phrase \u201cHelp me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you\u2019re my only hope,\u201d her hair styled in futuristic braided buns. She reprised the role in Episode VII of the series, \u201cStar Wars: The Force Awakens\u201d in 2015, and her digitally rendered image appears in \u201cRogue One: A Star Wars Story.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo words #Devastated,\u201d actor Mark Hamill posted on Twitter Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Actor Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the \u201cStar Wars\u201d films, wrote: \u201cThere are no words for this loss. Carrie was the brightest light in every room she entered. I will miss her dearly.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fisher long battled drug addiction and mental illness. She said she smoked pot at age 13, used LSD by 21 and was first diagnosed as bipolar at age 24. She was treated with electroconvulsive therapy and medication.<\/p>\n
In 1987, her thinly veiled autobiography \u201cPostcards From the Edge\u201d became a best seller. It was adapted into a 1990 film starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep.<\/p>\n
More books followed: \u201cDelusions of Grandma,\u201d \u2018\u2019Surrender the Pink,\u201d \u2018\u2019The Best Awful,\u201d \u2018\u2019Shockaholic\u201d and this year\u2019s autobiography, \u201cThe Princess Diarist,\u201d in which she revealed that she and co-star Harrison Ford had an affair on the set of \u201cStar Wars.\u201d<\/p>\n
Walt Disney Company chief Bob Iger said in a statement Tuesday that Fisher \u201cwas one-of-a-kind, a true character who shared her talent and her truth with us all with her trademark wit and irreverence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ever ready to satirize herself, she has even played Carrie Fisher a few times, as in David Cronenberg\u2019s dark Hollywood sendup \u201cMaps to the Stars\u201d and in an episode of \u201cSex and the City.\u201d In the past 15 years, Fisher also appeared as a television guest star, recently in the Amazon show \u201cCatastrophe\u201d as the mother of Rob Delaney\u2019s lead, and perhaps most memorably as a has-been comedy legend on \u201c30 Rock.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also stars with her mother in a documentary set to air on HBO next year. Directed by Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens, \u201cBright Lights\u201d premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year.<\/p>\n
Lately, she endeared herself to the social-media generation with her unusual Twitter style and constant accompaniment by her dog, Gary Fisher, a French bulldog with his own Twitter and Instagram account. (\u201cSaddest tweets to tweet. Mommy is gone. I love you @carrieffisher,\u201d the dog\u2019s Twitter feed read Tuesday.)<\/p>\n
Her one-woman show, \u201cWishful Drinking,\u201d which performed across the country since 2006, was turned into a book, made its way to Broadway in 2009 and was captured for HBO in 2010.<\/p>\n
Little was off-limits in the show. She discussed the scandal that engulfed her superstar parents (Fisher 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a product of Hollywood inbreeding. When two celebrities mate, something like me is the result,\u201d she said in the show. At another point, she cracked: \u201cI don\u2019t have a problem with drugs so much as I have a problem with sobriety.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI will miss our banterings,\u201d William Shatner wrote on Twitter Tuesday. \u201cA wonderful talent & light has been extinguished.\u201d<\/p>\n
Besides her mother and daughter, Fisher is survived by her brother, Todd Fisher.<\/p>\n
In a 2009 interview with The Associated Press, Fisher wasn\u2019t coy about revealing details about her unusual life, whether it was about drug addiction, mental illness or her failed relationships. She hoped to destigmatize mental health problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople relate to aspects of my stories and that\u2019s nice for me because then I\u2019m not all alone with it,\u201d she said. \u201cAlso, I do believe you\u2019re only as sick as your secrets. If that\u2019s true, I\u2019m just really healthy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
LOS ANGELES \u2014 Carrie Fisher, the daughter of Hollywood royalty who played Princess Leia in the original \u201cStar Wars\u201d and turned her experiences with addiction and mental illness into bestselling books, a hit film and popular stage performances, died Tuesday after suffering a medical emergency aboard a flight on Friday. She was 60. Her daughter, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-4801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4801","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4801\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4801"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=4801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}