She Never Wanted to Act
Carrie Fisher always seemed destined for greatness. The daughter of movie stars Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, she was already an accomplished Broadway actress by the time she was 16 and was exploring the galaxy as Princess Leia in Star Wars by age 20 – a role that transformed her into one of the biggest names in the world.
In spite of all this, Fisher always seemed very human. She was open about her struggles with addiction and mental health, went through a series of tumultuous relationships, and tragically passed away too early in 2016. As the world continues to celebrate her legacy, here are a few things you may not have known about the great Carrie Fisher.
Fisher got a firsthand look at how fame can affect lives and relationships, particularly when it came to her parents’ painful divorce and subsequent media coverage. She was a talented actress and singer from a very young age, but she never took advantage of her family’s Hollywood connections, or tried to put herself into the spotlight. She just wanted a normal, everyday life.
However, things changed after her Broadway debut in Irene at age 16, alongside her mother Debbie Reynolds. She decided to give acting a try and enrolled in the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. She stayed there until 1975, when she got an audition for a little film called Star Wars, and the rest is history.
Life as Princess Leia Wasn’t Easy for Her
Becoming an overnight movie star and sex symbol certainly took its toll on Fisher, and she was never shy about admitting it. Princess Leia’s gold bikini from Return of the Jedi is one of the most iconic outfits in pop culture, but filming the scene wasn’t easy for Fisher, physically or mentally. She told NPR how the outfit made her “very nervous” and that she had to “sit very straight because [she] couldn’t have lines on [her] sides, like little creases. No creases were allowed, so I had to sit very, very rigid straight.”
There were also other issues on the Star Wars set, including her brief affair with co-star Harrison Ford, who was two decades older and married at the time. Fisher didn’t reveal the details of the affair until the release of her 2016 memoir, The Princess Diarist.
She Was a Talented Writer
Fisher had also been a wordsmith from a young age – spending her childhood writing poetry and reading romance novels, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that she started writing regularly. Her first book, Postcards from the Edge, was released in 1987 as an autobiographical novel about a recovering addict dealing with being in the shadow of her extremely famous mother. She went on to write many more memoirs, essays, and novels, the last of which was released mere weeks before her death in 2016.
She was also one of the most prolific “script doctors” in Hollywood, working on films like The Wedding Singer, Hook, Lethal Weapon 3, and more. Most of her work on these scripts went uncredited, showing that she really wasn’t in it for the fame.
Her Daughter Is Continuing Fisher’s Legacy
Actress Billie Lourd is Fisher’s only child, born in 1992 with then-partner Bryan Lourd. Billie has become a rising star in Hollywood, starring in TV shows like Scream Queens, American Horror Story, and the hit 2019 film Booksmart. While she suffered a devastating loss in 2016 when her mom Carrie and grandmother Debbie Reynolds passed away within days of each other. She’s carrying on her family’s legacy in the best way she knows how – in front of a camera.
“Leia is more than just a character,” Lourd told Time in 2019 about her mother’s iconic character. “She’s a feeling. She is strength. She is grace. She is wit. She is femininity at its finest.”
Carrie On
Despite being Hollywood royalty, Carrie Fisher was a legend in her own right. She acted in major motion pictures, wrote novels and scripts, and even sang show tunes – a hidden talent not many people knew about. But alongside her talent was a series of struggles that anybody can relate to, such as not feeling good enough or questioning her own self-worth. She left far too soon, but Carrie Fisher was a true icon who will never be forgotten.