Actress and author Carrie Fisher dies at age 60
- Actress Carrie Fisher, who found enduring fame as Princess Leia in the original 'Star Wars' passed away
- She was 60.
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"It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning," read the statement from publicist Simon Halls. "She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly." Fisher had been hospitalized since Friday when she suffered a medical emergency on board a flight to Los Angeles.
She made her feature film debut opposite Warren Beatty in the 1975 hit Shampoo. Fisher also appeared in Austin Powers,The Blues Brothers, Charlie's Angels, Hannah and Her Sisters, Scream 3 and When Harry Met Sally.
But she is best remembered as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars in 1977 with her now-iconic braided buns, who uttered the immortal phrase, "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope." Fisher played a part in which she was tough, feisty and powerful, even if at one point she was chained to Jabba the Hutt. (She reprised the role in Episode VII of the series, Star Wars: The Force Awakens in 2015, and her digitally rendered image appears in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story.) Fisher long battled drug addiction and mental illness. She said she smoked pot at age 13, used LSD by 21 and was first diagnosed as bipolar at age 24. She was treated with electro-convulsive therapy and medication.
In 1987, her thinly veiled autobiography 'Postcards From the Edge' became a best seller. It became a 1990 film starring Shirley MacLaine and Meryl Streep. More books followed: Delusions of Grandma, Surrender the Pink, The Best Awful, Shockaholic and this year's autobiography, The Princess Diarist, in which she revealed that she and co-star Harrison Ford had an affair on the set of Star Wars.
Ever ready to satirize herself, she has even played Carrie Fisher a few times, as in David Cronenberg's dark Hollywood send up Maps to the Stars and in an episode of Sex and the City. In the past 15 years, Fisher also had a somewhat prolific career as a television guest star, recently in the Amazon show "Catastrophe" as the mother of Rob Delaney's lead, and perhaps most memorably as a has-been comedy legend on 30 Rock.
Her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, which she's performed on and off across the country since 2006, was turned into a book, made its way to Broadway in 2009 and was captured for HBO in 2010.
