Carrie Fisher Biography

Carrie Fisher is best remembered as the plucky Princess Leia in the hit film Star Wars (1977) and its sequels.

She also made her mark as a screenwriter and novelist before her sudden death in 2016.

Her parents, actress Debbie Reynolds and crooner Eddie Fisher, were a famous Hollywood couple of their day. (Eddie Fisher left Reynolds in 1958, when Carrie was 2 years old, to marry Elizabeth Taylor.)

Carrie Fisher made her feature film debut in 1975’s Shampoo (with Warren Beatty), and two years later had her breakthrough with Star Wars. She also joined co-stars Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford in two sequels, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983).

Later she had supporting roles in films like The Blues Brothers (1980, with John Belushi), The Man With One Red Shoe (1985, with Tom Hanks), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986, with Woody Allen), When Harry Met Sally (1989, with Meg Ryan) and Wonderland (2003, with Kate Bosworth).

Carrie Fisher battled drug addiction and manic-depression in the 1980s, and later described her struggles in the semi-autobiographical book Postcards From the Edge (1990); she wrote the script for a movie version released the same year.

In the 1990s she became known as a screenwriter and “script doctor” for feature films, and began hosting her own talk show on TV, Conversations From the Edge.

She also wrote the 2004 novel The Best Awful, also based on her personal experiences, and the memoirs Wishful Drinking (2008) and The Princess Diarist (2016).

In 2015 she appeared in The Force Awakens, the long-awaited sequel to the original Star Wars trilogy.

She died the next year, a few days after suffering a heart attack on a plane flight from London to Los Angeles.