Carrie Fisher - OBITUARY
OBITUARY
Carrie Fisher
Colourful, witty and somewhat erratic actress born into Hollywood royalty and best known for playing Princess Leia in Star Wars
Carrie Fisher was fresh out of drama school when she was auditioned by George Lucas for the part of Princess Leia in an obscure sci-fi film called Star Wars. Almost 40 years later she reprised her role for one of the franchise’s many films, The Force Awakens, in which once again she was fighting intergalactic foes.
Between those two milestones Fisher, born into Hollywood royalty and once described as too eccentric for Tinseltown, starred in only a handful of major films, including The Blues Brothers (1980) and When Harry Met Sally (1989), in which she played Marie, keeping a card-index system of men she tries to set up with Sally. She also wrote a series of books such as Postcards from the Edge (1987) about an actress called Suzanne trying to restore her life after taking a drug overdose; Wishful Drinking (2008), a memoir about her addictions; and The Princess Diarist (2016), in which she disclosed that during the filming of the original Star Wars she had an affair with Harrison Ford, who was married at the time to Mary Marquardt.
While the force may have been with her, it was never very clear in which direction forces were pulling her. At times her whole life seemed like one big drama. There was a drug-induced psychotic breakdown; her father ran off with the actress Elizabeth Taylor; the father of her only child left her for a man; on one occasion she woke up next to the dead body of a Republican lobbyist (whose ghost she later feared haunted her house); and just before Christmas she suffered a cardiac arrest on a flight from London to Los Angeles.
Some said that despite the well-publicised addictions, which did no harm to her book sales, Fisher’s real addiction was to shocking other people. She spent Michael Jackson’s last Christmas with him (they shared the same dentist, Evan Chandler, who accused Jackson of molesting his son); was asked by Senator Ted Kennedy at a dinner party in 1985 whether she would have sex in a hot tub (“I’m no good in water,” was her reply); and arranged deliveries of marijuana and prostitutes to ease her dying father’s pain when he was wheelchair bound.
Fisher made no secret of her bipolar disorder, attracting praise for talking candidly about her illness at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting in May 2004 in New York City, and discussing it in detail with Stephen Fry, a fellow sufferer, in a BBC programme in 2006. She was also an advocate for electroconvulsive therapy, which helped her with depression but shredded her memory.
Yet it is as Princess Leia, with her hairdo clamped like two bagels to either side of her head, that Fisher will forever remain in the public memory. “In the street, they call out, ‘Hey, Princess!’, which makes me feel like a poodle,” she once complained, adding with resignation: “I’ll go to my grave as Princess Leia.”
Carrie Frances Fisher was born in 1956. Her father was the Fifties crooner Eddie Fisher, of Russian-Jewish descent, and her mother is the actress Debbie Reynolds, a Nazarene of British ancestry who starred in Singin’ in the Rain. Family legend was that her mother was so anaesthetised at the birth that when her father fainted as Carrie’s head emerged, the doctors and nurses devoted all their attention to him and Carrie arrived “virtually unattended”. “And I have been trying to make up for that fact ever since,” she once said. A photograph taken of her at two hours old appeared in Life magazine, the start of a lifetime in the public eye. Almost 18 months later her brother Todd, who became a film director, was born.
"It was Han and Leia in the week and Carrie and Harrison at the weekend"
Her parents divorced when she was two and soon afterwards Eddie Fisher became the fourth of Taylor’s eight husbands. As a child Carrie immersed herself in books and writing poetry, but by 13 she was smoking pot. She was a pupil at Beverly Hills High School, dropping out to be a chorus girl in the show Irene, starring her mother, and to appear in a nightclub act in Las Vegas, again arranged by Reynolds. “Chorus work is more valuable to a child than any education could ever be,” Fisher wrote in Wishful Drinking.
Her 18 months in London at the Central School of Speech and Drama were the nearest thing she had to normality, but they were barely finished when she made her screen debut in the comedy Shampoo (1975), starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn, about a hairdresser who massages more than just the hair of his female clients. Her moment of screen glory came when she propositioned Beatty with the words: “Wanna fuck?”
She gave up marijuana while filming Star Wars (1977; later retitled Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope). By the time she reprised her role in The Empire Strikes Back three years later she was a celebrity in her own right, featuring on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine. She returned to its cover in 1983 to promote Return of the Jedi, this time in a metal bikini. Yet even more serious addictions — to cocaine and prescription medication — were round the corner and in 1985 she had to have her stomach pumped after a drug overdose.
As befits the daughter of two celebrities, her private life — if indeed it ever was private — was colourful. In 1983 she married Paul Simon after a seven-year romance, later claiming that his songs She Moves On and Hearts and Bones were about their relationship. She once explained the attraction: “Paul is a short, Jewish singer. [My father] Eddie is a short, Jewish singer. Short. Jewish. Singer. Any questions?” Their courtship was interrupted by her brief engagement in 1980 to Dan Aykroyd, the Canadian actor and comedian, who once used the Heimlich manoeuvre on her when she choked on a brussels sprout. The marriage to Simon ended after less than a year, but they continued dating for several more years (“We had make-up sex all the time, we broke up so often,” she said).
From 1991 to 1994 she was in a relationship with Bryan Lourd, her agent, with whom she had a daughter Billie Lourd, who had a minor role in The Force Awakens in 2015. When asked how she didn’t realise that Lourd was gay she replied: “He must have forgotten to tell me.” Thereafter, she said, she was single. “I don’t have a boyfriend,” she told The Times in 2011. “Maybe there’s a website I can start for over-the-hill celebrities?”
Although Postcards from the Edge, which appeared in 1987, soon became a film starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine, she now dipped somewhat out of view, often busy with appointments at rehab clinics and the like. Drugs and celebrity aside, when not appearing in front of the camera Fisher was a hardworking, sharp and incisive rewriter of Hollywood scripts (among them The River Wild, The Wedding Singer and Sister Act), on many of which she went uncredited. In 2014 she spoke at the Hay Festival, demonstrating again her sharp mind and quick wit.
Meanwhile, books such as Wishful Drinking (2008), which was also a play, and Shockaholic (2011) brought her back into the public conscience with a jolt before the Star Wars franchise flew back into her orbit. She claimed that the directors of The Force Awakens ordered her to lose 35lb before shooting started. “They don’t want to hire all of me — only about three quarters,” she quipped.
For those who thought her onscreen relationship with Han Solo, played by Ford, some 14 years her senior, in the original Star Wars was intense, the reason was revealed with the publication of The Princess Diarist, her final memoir. “It was Han and Leia during the week and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend,” she told People magazine of their secret affair.
In later years Fisher’s constant companion and friend was her French bulldog, Gary. He accompanied her on the endless round of TV talk shows where she was a popular guest, and even went with her to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in May this year. On one occasion she tried to deliver a petition containing 11 million signatures objecting to a dog-meat festival in southwest China to the Chinese embassy in London, but it was refused.
Chrissy Iley, who interviewed Fisher for The Times magazine in 2011, described her home, which once belonged to Bette Davis, as “like the witch’s house in Hansel and Gretel” with its secret room for storing drink that dated from the Prohibition era. In truth it was more like a commune, with a rotating cast of lodgers, visitors and hangers on, among them James Blunt, who wrote songs in her bathroom, and the screenwriter Bruce Wagner, in whose film Maps to the Stars Fisher played herself.
There was certainly little sign of Fisher growing old gracefully, nor was she interested in doing so. “With age comes wisdom,” she once said, “and a whole bunch of other bad shit.”
Carrie Fisher, actress, was born on October 21, 1956. She died on December 27, 2016, after a heart attack, aged 60
Galaxy of stars mourn loss of Carrie Fisher, 60
Hollywood luminaries including director Steven Spielberg paid tribute to Carrie Fisher last night after the actress and writer died in Los Angeles.
Fisher, 60, who first played Princess Leia in a Star Wars film when she was 19 before embarking on a successful career as a writer, had spent Christmas in intensive care after suffering a heart attack on a flight from London to America on Friday.
A family statement 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.”
Fisher was the daughter of Debbie Reynolds, the actress best known for the 1952 film Singin’ in the Rain. Yesterday 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, Carrie’s Mother.”
Steven Spielberg said: “I have always stood in awe of Carrie. Her observations made me laugh and gasp at the same time. She didn’t need The Force. She was a force of nature, of loyalty and of friendship. I will miss her very much.”
Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker, tweeted: “No words #Devastated.”
Fisher fell unconscious while flying to Los Angeles last week, about 15 minutes before the jet was due to land. Passengers tried to save her before she was taken to hospital. Witnesses said paramedics worked on her for 15 minutes to try to revive her.
She had been in Britain on a publicity tour for her new book, The Princess Diarist in which she disclosed that she had a three-month affair with her co-star Harrison Ford while filming Star Wars: Episode IV. In the book she called it “a very long one-night stand”. Yesterday Ford paid tribute: “Carrie was one-of-a-kind . . . brilliant, original, funny and emotionally fearless. She lived her life, bravely.”
Even before she played a princess she was Hollywood royalty. She was in the headlines as a youngster when her father, the crooner Eddie Fisher, left her mother for Elizabeth Taylor, the Hollywood actress, in 1959.
Carrie Fisher was catapulted to stardom in her own right in 1977, when the first Star Wars film became a box office sensation. She played Leia Organa, a gutsy rebel leader, general, diplomat and spy in four of the films.
In later years, she drifted away from acting but not out of the spotlight. She talked and wrote extensively about her abuse of drugs including cocaine, which she used while filming The Empire Strikes Back. She also disclosed that she suffered bipolar disorder.
She was the author of four bitingly sardonic novels and three memoirs. Her semi-biographical debut, Postcards from the Edge, was turned into a film, directed by Mike Nichols and starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine, in 1990. It describes the life of an actress as she tries to put her life together after a drug overdose.
She reprised her role as Leia last year in Star Wars: The Force Awakens, the seventh instalment of the franchise. She was also due to appear in the next film, which is expected to be released in December. After the release of The Force Awakens she urged fans to stop discussing her looks. “My body hasn’t aged as well as I have,” she said.
Fame never went to her head. “When I got the part of a princess in this goofy little science-fiction film, I thought: it’ll be fun to do,” she said. “I’m 19! Who doesn’t want to have fun at 19? I’ll go hang out with a bunch of robots for a few months and then return to my life and try to figure out what I want to do when I grow up.
“But then this goofy, little three-month hang-out with robots did something unexpected. It exploded across the firmament of pop culture, taking all of us along with it. It tricked me into becoming a star all on my own.”
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