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Iconic Star Wars Actress Carrie Fisher Dies at 60 (people.com)
Carrie Fisher, the actress, author and screenwriter who brought a rare combination of nerve, grit and hopefulness to her most indelible role, as Princess Leia in the "Star Wars" film franchise, died on Tuesday morning at the age of 60. From a report: "It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning," reads the statement. Fisher was flying from London to Los Angeles on Friday, Dec. 23, when she went into cardiac arrest. Paramedics removed her from the flight and rushed her to a nearby hospital, where she was treated for a heart attack. She later died in the hospital. The daughter of renowned entertainers Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, Fisher was brought up in the sometimes tumultuous world of film, theater and television. Escaping Hollywood in 1973, the star enrolled in the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, where she spent over a year studying acting. Just two years later, though, the bright lights of Hollywood drew her back, and Fisher made her film debut in the Warren Beatty-led Shampoo. Her role in Star Wars would follow in 1977 -- and she detailed the experience, including her on-set affair with costar Harrison Ford, in her latest memoir, The Princess Diarist. She was only 19 when the first installment of the beloved sci-fi franchise was filmed. Fisher's fans, family, and colleagues have paid their tribute to the actress The Guardian has published an intense tribute to Fisher in an article titled "The loss of Carrie Fisher is felt by all who love Hollywood, warmth and wit".
From BBC's obituary of Fisher: She was a self-confessed bookworm as a child reading poetry and classical literature. Her high school education was disrupted by the lure of the stage when she appeared in the musical Irene alongside her mother, and she never graduated. She moved to London where she enrolled in the Central School of Speech and Drama before returning to the US and attending the Sarah Lawrence arts college near New York. Having managed to kick drugs and alcohol, she was rushed to hospital in 1985 after accidentally taking an overdose of sleeping pills and prescription drugs. The episode formed the basis for her first novel, the semi-autobiographical Postcards from the Edge, in which she satirised her own dependence on drugs and the sometimes difficult relationship she had with her mother. Three years later Fisher adapted it into a screenplay, and it was made into a film starring Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, and Dennis Quaid. Fisher -- who had bipolar disorder -- also wrote and frequently talked in public about her years of drug addiction and mental illness. Carrie Fisher's fame as an actress rested on just one role, but it was a role in one of the best known and most successful film franchises in cinema history. She was remarkably frank about the personal difficulties she had fought and overcome. "There's a part of me that gets surprised when people think I am brave to talk about what I've gone through," she once said. "I was brave to last through it." The world is poorer without you, Fisher. Rest in peace.
From BBC's obituary of Fisher: She was a self-confessed bookworm as a child reading poetry and classical literature. Her high school education was disrupted by the lure of the stage when she appeared in the musical Irene alongside her mother, and she never graduated. She moved to London where she enrolled in the Central School of Speech and Drama before returning to the US and attending the Sarah Lawrence arts college near New York. Having managed to kick drugs and alcohol, she was rushed to hospital in 1985 after accidentally taking an overdose of sleeping pills and prescription drugs. The episode formed the basis for her first novel, the semi-autobiographical Postcards from the Edge, in which she satirised her own dependence on drugs and the sometimes difficult relationship she had with her mother. Three years later Fisher adapted it into a screenplay, and it was made into a film starring Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, and Dennis Quaid. Fisher -- who had bipolar disorder -- also wrote and frequently talked in public about her years of drug addiction and mental illness. Carrie Fisher's fame as an actress rested on just one role, but it was a role in one of the best known and most successful film franchises in cinema history. She was remarkably frank about the personal difficulties she had fought and overcome. "There's a part of me that gets surprised when people think I am brave to talk about what I've gone through," she once said. "I was brave to last through it." The world is poorer without you, Fisher. Rest in peace.
As Leia, she was a blaster-toting Rebel leader. Off screen, she battled with mental illness and came forward about it - enabling many other people to feel like they were not alone. She was the toughest Princess ever. RIP Carrie.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I think the part the original three actors played in Star Wars is underappreciated. Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford, and Mark Hamill each played their parts well, and could fix up George Lucas' bad dialogue. It turns out that adult Mark Hamill is naturally a villain. Maybe George Lucas should have made sequels with the original cast instead of the prequels. Have Luke turn to the dark side, and kill Han Solo.
To the credit of the Force Awakens, Finn, and the woman also seem to have good chemistry and personality.
Is there a list of people who died this year who actually deserved to die and whose deaths actually left us better off? You know, fascist or communist dictators, serial killers, people who talk loudly on their cellphones in restaurants? That kind of thing?
Right now the only one I can think of is Castro.
(Well, if you'd ever sat in the same restaurant as him you'd know why.)
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
What movie has she even been in that was iconic?
Tomb Raider
Holy shit. For someone who doesn't care about the death of a person that others may have loved, you sure are vocal about trying to get others to hate on her as well.
Who shoved a lightsaber so far up your ass this morning?
Weren't you the guy who was so awesome at it they fired you?
I was a video game tester from 1997 to 2004. Yes, my boss tried to fire me because I was so awesome. When he got promoted into management and made a big deal out of the fact that I got a 2% raise, I informed him that it was nothing as I had gotten a 50% raise in my first year. It pissed him off that I made more money than him for five years. Somehow he got this misinformed idea that being the manager meant he was the best tester in the department. He wasn't. He was very good at lying about his numbers — and rode the company into bankruptcy. I was the third of a dozen senior testers who headed for the exits.
And then you couldnt get another job for a long time [...]
I was out of work for two years (2009-10), underemployed for six months (working 20 hours per month), and filed for chapter seven bankruptcy in 2011. For the next two years I worked seven days a week on multiple contract assignments.
[...] and then you got hired to go government IT because they hire anyone?
The government IT position that I got hired for in 2014 required 10+ years of IT experience and a security clearance. My contracting agency gave me an extra month of pay as a Christmas bonus because I'm so awesome. ;)
In Monaco perhaps. Rich American women marrying into European royalty is hardly anything new. Likely a few female members of nobility have come over here and become Naturalized Citizens too. But we don't recognize such titles here in the USA.
Carrie Fisher was different in that WE gave her that title.
> All the Star Wars movies were "just cash-grabs"
The first one wasn't. George Lucas and the studio were both pretty convinced it would flop. Lucas made it because he always wanted to do a Flash Gordon style space opera, and was flush from the success of American Graffiti so he got his way.
My guess, since she was "flat line" for 10-15 minutes at least, is she was pretty much gone before arriving to the hospital. Keeping her on a ventilator, "technically" kept her alive until she could make it past Christmas. Who the hell would want to remember your wife, daughter, mother "dying" on Christmas. Another thing that may or may not show up if there is an autopsy, made public, is considering her youthful lifestyle, "sex, drugs and rock & roll", her system was probably weakened. Then on top of that, she was told to lose a bunch of weight for the star wars movie, which she did. Who knows how she lost it. Training or drugs? Couple that, with the extended book tour she's been on, requiring a lot of traveling inside a pressurized aluminum tube (airplane), can cause a weakened heart to go out, not to mention any DVT clots that may have broken loose. Just a little warning for the youth, from someone who is close to her age, TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF in your youth...you can't wreck your body that much in your 20's and 30's and expect it to behave in your late 50's and higher.