Carrie Fisher

Carrie Frances Fisher was born on October 21, 1956, at Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, California, and grew up in Beverly Hills. She was the daughter of singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. Her parents divorced in 1959, and her mother subsequently married Harry Karl in 1960; that marriage ended in 1973. Her father's third marriage, to actress Connie Stevens, produced two half-sisters, Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher. Fisher described herself as a childhood bookworm who read classic literature and wrote poetry from an early age.

Fisher left Beverly Hills High School at age 16 to appear in the Broadway revival of Irene in 1973, a production in which her mother also starred. The commitment to that run interrupted her schooling and led to her dropping out of high school. She subsequently enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, attending for eighteen months, and was later accepted at Sarah Lawrence College, which she left without completing a degree.

Her Broadway career spanned 1973 to 2009 and included four productions. Beyond Irene, she appeared in Censored Scenes from King Kong in 1980 and originated the role of Sister Agnes in Agnes of God in 1983, a run that overlapped with her mother's appearance in the Broadway company of Woman of the Year. Decades later, Fisher returned to Broadway with Wishful Drinking, a one-woman show for which she also wrote the book. That production earned her a Drama Desk Award nomination for Outstanding Solo Performance in 2010.

Fisher made her film debut in 1975 in the Columbia Pictures comedy Shampoo, playing the character Lorna Karpf. Two years later she was cast as Princess Leia in George Lucas's Star Wars, opposite Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford, a role she reprised in The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). She returned to the character in The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), the last two released after her death, with The Last Jedi dedicated to her and The Rise of Skywalker incorporating previously unreleased footage. Among her other film credits are The Blues Brothers (1980), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), The 'Burbs (1989), When Harry Met Sally... (1989), Soapdish (1991), and The Women (2008).

As a writer, Fisher published her first novel, Postcards from the Edge, in 1987. The semi-autobiographical book drew on her experiences with drug addiction and her relationship with her mother, became a bestseller, and earned her the Los Angeles PEN Award for Best First Novel. She adapted the book into a screenplay for the 1990 Columbia Pictures film starring Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine, and Dennis Quaid, and that screenplay received a BAFTA Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. She went on to publish Surrender the Pink (1990) and Delusions of Grandma (1993). Wishful Drinking originated as a one-woman stage show before Fisher expanded it into a nonfiction book; the televised version of the stage show received a Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Variety, Music or Comedy Special. Fisher also worked extensively as a script doctor, contributing uncredited revisions to productions including Hook (1991), Sister Act (1992), The Wedding Singer (1998), and multiple films in the Star Wars franchise.

On television, Fisher received two Primetime Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, one for her work on the NBC sitcom 30 Rock in 2007 and another for the Channel 4 series Catastrophe in 2017. She and her mother were the subjects of the documentary Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, which examined their relationship and premiered at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival. Fisher was also publicly candid about her experiences with bipolar disorder and drug addiction.

Fisher died of sudden cardiac arrest on December 27, 2016, at age 60, four days after suffering a medical emergency aboard a transatlantic flight from London to Los Angeles. She was posthumously designated a Disney Legend in 2017, received a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album in 2018, and was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2023.