CARRIE FISHER - dies aged 60 - R.I.P.

Carrie Frances Fisher passed away on Tuesday 27th December following complications brought on by a massive heart attack while aboard a flight from London to Los Angeles on Friday 23rd December. She has been hospitalised since arriving in Los Angeles. She was sixty years of age having been born on October 21st 1956. Fisher was an Actress, Producer and Writer whose career spanned five decades across film, television, and writing, and can be described in every sense as a true product of Hollywood. Her father was legendary Singer and Actor Eddie Fisher who was the most successful pop singles artist of the first half of the 1950's. Her mother was the acclaimed Debbie Reynolds who started acting in 1950 on stage and screen and continued with her acting career right up until the time of her tragic passing on the day following the death of her daughter. Fisher and Reynolds were married from 1955 until 1959, and Carrie was a product of that marriage, before Fisher left and married Reynold's best friend Elizabeth Taylor.

Best known for her role as Princess Leia Organa in the original Star Wars films - 'A New Hope' (1977), 'The Empire Strikes Back' (1980) and 'Return of the Jedi' (1983), she reprised her role for 2015's 'The Force Awakens' and her likeness was used digitally for the closing scene of the recent first stand alone Star Wars story 'Rogue One'. She will also appear posthumously in 'Star Wars : Episode VIII' due in late 2018 as General Leia Organa. 'Star Wars' was only hers second big screen role following a part in 1975's 'Shampoo' with Warren Beatty, Julie Christie and Goldie Hawn and this followed on from her small screen debut in 1969, in the made for TV movie 'Debbie Reynolds and the Sound of Children'.

Fisher attended the Beverly Hills High School until fifteen, and then due to conflicting acting demands she gave up her schooling and never graduated.  In 1973 she enrolled in London's Central School of Speech and Drama which she stuck at for eighteen months. In 1978 she enrolled in the Sarah Lawrence College in New York to study the arts but left before graduating because of the demands of 'Star Wars'.

In the decades that followed Fisher was seldom out of work appearing in numerous film and television roles. These included more memorable feature films such as 'The Blues Brothers' (1980) as Jake Blues vengeful ex-lover; Woody Allen's 'Hannah and Her Sisters' (1986); 'The Burb's' (1989) opposite Tom Hanks; 'When Harry Met Sally' (1989) with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan; 'Sibling Rivalry' (1990) with Kirsty Alley; 'Drop Dead Fred' (1991) with Rik Mayall; 'This Is My Life' (1992) with Julie Kavnar; and uncredited roles in 'Hook' and 'Austin Powers : International Man of Mystery'.

In the meantime Fisher had penned her first novel in 1987 - the semi-autobiographical 'Postcards from the Edge' in which she fictionalised and satirised real-life events such as her drug addiction of the late 1970s and her relationship with her mother. The book became a best seller and in 1990 a film version of the book was released that was adapted for the screen by Fisher. The film starred Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, Annette Benning, Dennis Quaid, Gene Hackman and Richard Dreyfus and it picked up numerous award nominations for Streep and MacLaine including Academy Award, Golden Globe and BAFTA nods. She went onto release two further novels by the turn of the century - 'Surrender the Pink' and 'Delusions of Grandma' in 1990 and 1993 respectively.

During this time too Fisher began working on script refinements for numerous films including 'Lethal Weapon 3', 'Outbreak', 'The Wedding Singer', 'The River Wild', 'Sister Act', 'Coyote Ugly', 'Last Action Hero' and 'Stop! Or my Mom will Shoot'. This in turn led to a particularly productive period over a fifteen year stretch from the early '90's onward as a go to script doctor refining the screenplays for other writers. These included the dialogue for the 'Star Wars' prequel films. In 2004 she published a follow-up novel to 'Postcards from the Edge', titled 'The Best Awful There Is' - another semi-autobiographical work this time said to fictionalise the story of her relationship with the gay agent Bryan Lourd, father of her daughter, Billie Lourd. In 2008 she published her own autobiographical humorous book 'Wishful Drinking' which was based on her one woman stage show which ran at LA's Geffen Playhouse from late 2006 into early 2007. The show continued a successful run touring around select theatres, culminating in a run on Broadway from late 2009 through until early 2010. She made the comment in her book "Now I think that this would make for a fantastic obit—so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra." - a comment that has been much used in the media since the announcement of her death earlier this week. In 2010 HBO filmed a feature length documentary of the stage show.

In 2000 she payed a former Actress in slasher horror offering 'Scream 3' and then 'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back' before Co-Writing the 2001 made for television movie 'These Old Broads' which starred her mother Debbie Reynolds with Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley MacLaine and Joan Collins. This was followed up by a string of 'B-Movies' that included 'Heartbreakers', 'Wonderland', 'Stateside', 'Undiscovered', 'Cougar Club', 'The Women', 'Fanboys', 'White Lightnin'' and horror slasher flick 'Sorority Row'. During this decade there had been numerous television appearances too including the likes of 'Smallville', 'Weeds', '30 Rock', 'Entourage' and twenty-three episodes on 'Family Guy' as the voice of Angela.

Since 2010, aside from the 'Star Wars' instalments as previously mentioned, there have been David Cronenberg's 'Maps to the Stars' in which Fisher cameo's as herself, and single episodes on 'The Bing Bang Theory', 'Legit', two episodes on 'Girlfriends Guide to Divorce' and four episodes on Channel 4's 'Catastrophe'. Fisher died after filming Season 3 had wrapped on 'Catastrophe' which will go to air in 2017. Fisher and her mother Debbie Reynolds were also the subject of a 2016 documentary film which Premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival - 'Bright Lights : Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds' which goes to air on HBO sometime in 2017.

All up Fisher had 89 Acting credits to her name, eleven as Writer and one as Producer. She was the recipient of one award win and a further nine nominations. She was married to singer/songwriter Paul Simon from 1983 until 1984 although they had been dating since 1977, and continued to do so until 1990 after their divorce. For a brief time she was engaged to Dan Aykroyd in 1980. She had a subsequent relationship with talent agent Bryan Lourd with whom she had a daughter Billie Catherine Lourd born in 1992. She also revealed in her autobiography published this year - 'The Princess Diarist' that back in 1976 she and Harrison Ford enjoyed a short lived affair during the filming of 'Star Wars'.

She publicly discussed her diagnosis of bipolar disorder and her reliance on cocaine and prescription drugs. She is reported to have stated that her drug use was a form of self-medication using pain killers such as Percodan to "dial down" the manic aspect of her bipolar disorder. In 2008 she discussed her electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) treatments stating that at one point, she was receiving ECT every six weeks to 'blow apart the cement' in her brain. In 2014, she went on record that she was no longer receiving the treatment. Earlier this year Harvard College granted Fisher its Annual Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism, noting that 'her forthright activism and outspokenness about addiction, mental illness, and agnosticism have advanced public discourse on these issues with creativity and empathy'.

Carrie Fisher - prolific Screenwriter, Author and Actress who forever is etched in our memories for playing one of films greatest heroines across one of films greatest epic blockbusting franchises. May you forever rest in peace, and may the force be with you as brightly in the next world as it was in your former one. Thanks for the memories.

Carrie Fisher - Rest In Peace.
1956-2016.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-