By Travis Johnson
Actress and author Carrie Fisher has passed on following a cardiac incident on a flight from London to Los Angeles on Friday. She was 60.
A family spokesman today issued a statement, saying that she died approximately 4.00am AEST on Wednesday, December 28.
“It is with a very deep sadness that [Fisher’s daughter] Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55am this morning. She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly.”
The daughter of actors Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, Fisher was born into what was effectively Hollywood royalty on October 21, 1956. Making her film debut in 1975’s Shampoo, starring Warren Beatty, she found lasting fame as Princess Leia Organa in the Star Wars saga, beginning in the first movie in 1977 and returning to the character in last year’s The Force Awakens. She also appeared in The Blues Brothers, Hanna and her Sisters, Drop Dead Fred, The ‘Burbs, When Harry Met Sally and more.
Fisher was also an accomplished writer and memoirist. beginning with the semi-autobiographical novel Postcards from the Edge in 1987. Her written work frequently dealt with her mental health and substance abuse issues, and she was frank and honest when speaking on those topics in interviews. From the 1990s onward she became one of Hollywood’s top script doctors, doing uncredited work on a staggering number of high profile films, including Hook, Lethal Weapon 3 and Sister Act, Made in America, Last Action Hero and So I Married an Axe Murderer, Outbreak, The Wedding Singer, Star Wars: Episode I – III, Coyote Ugly and Scream 3, Kate & Leopold, and Intolerable Cruelty.
She is survived by her mother, Debbie Reynolds, her daughter, Billie Lourd, her brother Todd Fisher and her half-sisters Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher.
