Carrie Fisher

About Carrie Fisher

Carrie Frances Fisher (October 21, 1956 – December 27, 2016) was an American actress and writer. She played Princess Leia in the original Star Wars films (1977–1983). She reprised the role in Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017) — a posthumous release that was dedicated to her — and appeared in The Rise of Skywalker (2019), through the use of unreleased footage from The Force Awakens.

Fisher's other film credits include Shampoo (1975), The Blues Brothers (1980), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The 'Burbs (1989), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Soapdish (1991), and The Women (2008).[8] She was nominated twice for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her performances in the NBC sitcom 30 Rock (2007) and the Channel 4 series Catastrophe (2017).

Fisher wrote several semi-autobiographical novels, including Postcards from the Edge and an autobiographical one-woman play, and its non-fiction book, Wishful Drinking, based on the play. She wrote the screenplay for the film version of Postcards from the Edge which garnered her a nomination for the BAFTA Award for Best Adapted Screenplay, and her one-woman stage show of Wishful Drinking received a nomination for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Variety Special. Fisher worked on other writers' screenplays as a script doctor, including tightening the scripts for Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992), The Wedding Singer (1998), and many of the films from the Star Wars franchise, among others.

Fisher was the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. She and her mother appear in Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, a documentary about their relationship. It premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. She earned praise for speaking publicly about her experiences with bipolar disorder and drug addiction. Fisher died of a sudden cardiac arrest in December 2016, at age 60, four days after experiencing a medical emergency during a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles. She was posthumously made a Disney Legend in 2017, and was awarded a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album the following year. In 2023, she posthumously received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Fisher subsequently had a relationship with the Creative Artists Agency's principal talent agent, Bryan Lourd. Their only child, Billie Lourd, was born in 1992. Eddie Fisher stated in his autobiography (Been There Done That) that his granddaughter's name is Catherine Fisher Lourd and her nickname is "Billy". Carrie Fisher's relationship with Bryan Lourd ended when he left her for a man. In interviews, Fisher described Lourd as her second husband, but a 2004 profile revealed that she and Lourd were never legally married.

In 2011, Fisher became a spokesperson for the Jenny Craig weight loss program, On her blog, she writes:

So here I am, looking in the mirror at my tits, which mind you were once somewhat covered by the metal bikini, yet now are going on the size of a couple of planets. Seriously, they had to extend the alphabet to establish my bra size. Obviously, it was more than evident that I needed to lose weight – though I wasn’t exactly sure what I even weighed. I didn’t want to know.

Billie Lourd is her daughter and Debbie Reynolds was her mother.