Remembering Carrie Fisher
Seven years ago tomorrow we lost Carrie Fisher.
Carrie Frances Fisher was born on the 21st of October 1956 in Burbank, California, US.
She was an Actor, Author and Screenwriter.
Born into a showbiz family. Her Mother Debbie Reynolds was a screen legend most notably starring in “Sing’n in the Rain” (1952). Her father Eddie Fisher was a successful crooner-style popular music star.
Carrie was a “bookish” child who devoured classic literature and wrote poetry.
She attended Beverly Hills High School until at the age of 16 she was cast in the Broadway revival of the hit musical “Irene” in 1973.
Being in the musical disrupted her education and she decided to drop out of high school.
Later In 1973, she enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, which she attended for 18 months. Following her time there, she was accepted at Sarah Lawrence College which is a super posh snobby school in Yonkers, New York, US where she planned to study the arts but she quit without graduating.
She made her feature film debut in 1975 with a small part in the Hal Ashby directed film “Shampoo” playing the incredibly precocious character Lorna Karpf.
She was then cast by George Lucas to play the character Princess Leia in his 1977 Sci-fi movie “Star Wars” which significantly boosted her fame and visibility in the industry. She went on to portray the character “Princess Leia Organa” a further six times in her career.
She did have roles in other Films. “The Blues Brothers” (1980) “Hannah and Her Sisters”(1986) “When Harry Met Sally…” (1989), “The ‘Burbs” (1989) “Drop Dead Fred” (1991) and “Soapdish” (1991) she also appeared in a host of cameo appearances in films such as “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” (1997) “Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back” (2001), , “Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle” (2003) and “Fanboys” (2009).
She wrote two original screenplays that were made into feature films.
Postcards from the Edge (1990) and These Old Broads (2001)
Due to her wit and knowledge of cinema between 1991 - 2005 she became well known in Hollywood as a “Script Doctor” someone who can do a rewrite of a script and “Punch Up” humor of tighten up dialogue. The nature of the role of script doctor is they are paid but not credited so we don't know how many scripts passed through her hand over the years but we do know she worked on; “Hook” (1991), “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot” (1992),
“Lethal Weapon 3” (1992), Last Action Hero (1993), “Outbreak” (1995), “Anastasia” (1997) and “The Wedding Singer” (1998).
What shocked me is George Lucas employed her to give the scripts for the Star Wars prequel trilogy a once over. Imagine how bad the dialogue must have been before they got “punched up!”
Carrie was also a published author she wrote four Novels,
Postcards from the Edge (1987), Surrender the Pink (1990), Delusions of Grandma (1993) and The Best Awful There is (2004).
She also wrote four non fiction books,
Hollywood Moms (2001), Wishful Drinking (2008), Shockaholic (2011) and The Princess Diarist (2016)
Carrie Fisher was a maverick, a wild card and a very talented person in her own right regardless of her family tree. She also has a much bigger legacy than just playing a space princess in some movies.
She was upfront about her struggles with addiction and spoke openly about having Bipolar disorder by speaking out about both she became an advocate for addiction and mental health which helps break down the social stigma around these issues and probably saved peoples lives.
Carrie Fisher stopped breathing while sleeping on a flight between London and Los Angeles. The plane was almost in LA when a fellow passenger noticed she was not breathing. Cabin crew and a passenger performed CPR on Fisher until the plane landed and paramedics boarded the plane. Carrie was taken by ambulance to the UCLA Medical Center, where she was put on a ventilator. She was in intensive care for four days but passed away in the morning of the 27th of December of 2016. A precise cause of death was not found but there seemed to be a mix of contributing factors. Carrie was only 60 years old.
