Carrie Fisher

The Television & Movie Wiki: for TV, celebrities, and movies.

Carrie Fisher (born October 21, 1956) is an American actress, screenwriter and novelist.

1 Early Life
2 Rise to Fame
3 Filmography
4 Documentaries
5 Novels
6 External links

Early Life

She was born Carrie Frances Fisher in Beverly Hills, California, the daughter of Eddie Fisher (a well known singer) and actress Debbie Reynolds. Her younger brother is Todd Fisher. Her half-sisters are actresses Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher, whose mother is actress Connie Stevens. She was married to singer Paul Simon but divorced after 11 months. She is currently dating documentary director Bob Tur.

When she was two years old, her parents divorced and her father married actress Elizabeth Taylor. The following year, her mother married shoe store chain owner Harry Karl.

Fisher grew up wanting to follow in the footsteps of her famous parents. She began appearing with her mother in Las Vegas at age 12. She attended Beverly Hills High School, but left to become an actress. She appeared as a debutante and dancer in the hit Broadway revival Irene (1973) starring her mother.

Soon after, she enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, where she attended 18 months. Her first movie appearance was in the Columbia Pictures comedy Shampoo (1975) starring Warren Beatty, Julie Christie, and Goldie Hawn, with Lee Grant, and Jack Warden.

[edit]

Rise to Fame

In 1977, Fisher starred as Princess Leia Organa in George Lucas's sci-fi classic Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope opposite Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, with Peter Cushing, and Alec Guinness.

Image:StarWarsMoviePoster1977.jpg A New Hope was a huge success and made her internationally famous in her own right. Princess Leia became a merchandising triumph; there were small plastic dolls of her in every toy store nationwide. Fisher has often joked that it was actually Princess Leia who became famous, and she just happened to look like her.

During that time, the late 1970s, Fisher became addicted to various drugs. The problem became so severe that she was nearly fired from The Blues Brothers (1980) for being unable to sober up long enough to film a proper scene. She then cleaned up and joined N.A. and A.A.. She appeared a second time as Leia in the 1978 TV movie, The Star Wars Holiday Special, where her drug use was quite evident from her on-screen performance.

She appeared on Broadway in Censored Scenes From King Kong (1980), playing Iris. She appeared a second time as Leia in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back, and made her third and final appearance in 1983's Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. She was also a replacement in the Broadway play Agnes of God (1982).

Fisher's novel, Postcards from the Edge, which was semi-autobiographical in the sense that she fictionalized events obviously from her real life, such as her drug addiction of the late 1970s, was published in 1987. It became a sensational bestseller and she won the Los Angeles Pen Award for Best First Novel.

In 1990, Columbia released a movie version of Postcards from the Edge, adapted for the screen by Fisher and starring Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, and Dennis Quaid.

Carrie Fisher has had one husband, musician Paul Simon (married 1983-divorce 1984). She is the mother of Billie Catherine Lourd (born July 17, 1992), whose father is CAA principal and agent, Bryan Lourd. The couple's relationship ended when Lourd left her for a man. For a brief time she was engaged to Dan Aykroyd. She hosted the Saturday Night Live episode that was the first polished performance by Aykroyd and his friend John Belushi as their popular Blues Brothers characters Joliet Jake and Elwood, and Fisher later appeared in The Blues Brothers film as Joliet Jake's vengeful ex-lover, listed in the credits as "Mystery Woman".

Fisher's other novels include Surrender the Pink (1991), Delusions of Grandma (1993), Hollywood Moms (2001), and The Best Awful(2004).

Image:Princessleiaanh.jpg In 2001, she co-wrote the TV comedy movie These Old Broads, of which she was also co-executive producer, starring her mother, Debbie Reynolds, as well as Elizabeth Taylor, Joan Collins, and Shirley MacLaine. In this, Taylor's character, an agent, explains to Reynolds's character, an actress, that she was in a drunken blackout when she married the actress's husband, "Freddy."

In an interview on public radio in 2005, Fisher expressed some regret about being known overwhelmingly for her role as Princess Leia, and joked that she was afraid if she ever became senile she might begin to slip back into character.

Fisher has publicly discussed her problems with drugs, her battles with bipolar disorder, and overcoming an addiction to prescription antidepressants, most notably on ABC TV's 20/20.

On February 26, 2005, 42-year-old Republican Party media adviser R. Gregory Stevens was found dead in a guest room at Fisher's home. She stated that he was a longtime friend and often stayed with her. An autopsy revealed he died from an overdose of cocaine and OxyContin. [1]

Besides acting and writing, Carrie Fisher also works as a "script doctor" on the screenplays of other writers.

Since her portrayal of Leia Organa, another actor, Aiden Barton briefly played the role as a younger (an infant) version of Leia for Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

[edit]