Carrie Fisher

Born into Hollywood glare, Carrie Frances Fisher seemed to know early that fame could be both a stage light and a heat lamp. She arrived on October 21, 1956, in Burbank, California, the daughter of actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher. Her family story became public drama when her parents divorced in 1959, after Eddie Fisher’s affair with Elizabeth Taylor. Fisher grew up around performance, publicity, and adults whose private lives became headlines. As a child, she “hid in books,” earning the family nickname “the bookworm,” reading classic literature and writing poetry.

Fisher’s own career began young. At 16, she appeared as a debutante and singer in the Broadway revival Irene, alongside her mother, a role that interfered with school and led her to leave Beverly Hills High School. She later studied at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama for 18 months and was accepted to Sarah Lawrence College, where she planned to study the arts, though she left without graduating. Her film debut came in Shampoo in 1975, but two years later she became globally identified with Princess Leia in George Lucas’s Star Wars, opposite Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford.

Leia made Fisher famous, and Fisher returned to the role in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. Decades later she reprised it in The Force Awakens, The Last Jedi, and The Rise of Skywalker, the last using unreleased footage from The Force Awakens. But her screen life was never only one galaxy. Her film credits included The Blues Brothers, Hannah and Her Sisters, The ’Burbs, When Harry Met Sally..., Soapdish, and The Women. She also earned Primetime Emmy nominations for guest performances in 30 Rock and Catastrophe.

Fisher’s sharpest work may have come when she turned her own life into art. In 1987 she published Postcards from the Edge, a semi-autobiographical novel that fictionalized and satirized real events, including her drug addiction in the late 1970s and her relationship with her mother. The book became a bestseller, won her the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best First Novel, and led to a film adaptation for which Fisher wrote the screenplay, earning a BAFTA nomination. She also created the autobiographical one-woman show Wishful Drinking, later a nonfiction book; the stage show received an Emmy nomination as a variety, music, or comedy special.

Behind the scenes, Fisher became a prized script doctor. She worked on other writers’ screenplays, tightening scripts for Hook, Sister Act, The Wedding Singer, and many films in the Star Wars franchise. In 1992, Entertainment Weekly described her as “one of the most sought-after doctors in town.” She also earned praise for speaking openly about bipolar disorder and drug addiction, refusing to polish pain into something less honest. Fisher died in December 2016 at age 60, after a medical emergency during a transatlantic flight. Her words still resonate because they sound lived-in, funny, frightened, and brave all at once: “Stay afraid, but do it anyway.”