Carrie Fisher: She Was Our Princess

Our Princess Leia

When news of Carrie Fisher’s death broke, people all over the world mourned her loss. She was a talented actress and very vocal on the topics of mental health and addiction. While the next few days will undoubtedly be focused on her, Star Wars fans are wondering if her passing means the end of Leia.

As it turns out, Episode VIII finished filming back in July and is now in post-production, meaning that General Leia’s future is currently up in the air, but that she will be in the next movie at the very least.

Her posthumous performance is scheduled for December 15th, 2017, which means that writers will have until they start filming Episode IX in 2018 to figure out what Leia’s future is with the series. Will she be recast? Will her story end? Will she be recast? Will her story end in Episode VIII next year? Can there be a Leia without Carrie Fisher? We’ll find out soon enough.

Final farewells in Force Awakens

The tragic passing of Carrie Fisher was a monumental loss for all fans, not just Star Wars fans. The actress was born in Beverly Hills, California, to actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher, who also found fame hosting his own television show.

Carrie Fisher made her acting debut in 1975 in Shampoo, starring alongside household names such as Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn. Then she became an international screen star and sex symbol when she appeared in the first Star Wars blockbuster in 1977.

Fisher captured the hearts of a generation of young men as the blaster-toting, bikini-wearing princess and tough resistance leader in the three original Star Wars films. Her character had a simmering romance with Ford’s Solo throughout the films – 1977’s A New Hope, 1980’s The Empire Strikes Back and 1983’s Return of The Jedi – and was revealed to be the twin sister of the main character Luke Skywalker, played by Mark Hamill.

In Star Wars she was our great and powerful princess – feisty, wise and full of hope in a role that was more difficult than most people might think.

It was a role she seemed to love and hate in equal parts. “For years people have asked if I mind being remembered as Princess Leia. I used to say no. But now I will say that it sometimes bothers me, yes. It follows me around like a little smell,” she told Esquire in 2002. However, she eventually accepted the character (“melding” with Leia, as she later wrote.) Fisher reprised her role alongside Ford in 2015’s seventh film in the franchise, The Force Awakens, where her character had matured into a seasoned and respected resistance general who shared a son with Solo.

While she will always be best known for Star Wars, Fisher also appeared in films like The Blues Brothers and When Harry Met Sally, and had brilliant turns on TV shows like 30 Rock and the Amazon show Catastrophe.

Off screen, Fisher battled with drink, drugs and mental illness. Fisher’s bipolar disorder and addictions also made headlines, along with the electroshock treatments she took. She was also a prolific, hilarious author who frequently mined her life for material.

Carrie Fisher: a wicked sense of humour

In 1987 she published her semi-autobiographical novel Postcards From The Edge about a recovering drug addict film star. It became a bestseller and was turned into a 1990 film starring an Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep, Shirley MacLaine and Dennis Quaid.

She wrote and performed in an autobiographical one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, which went to Broadway and was turned into a book. There were more books, including this year’s autobiography The Princess Diarist in which she revealed she had an “intense” affair with Ford during the making of Star Wars.

She wrote for film, TV and the stage, and most recently took to Twitter where she posted gimlet-eyed observations and shared photos of her constant companion, her dog Gary.

Fisher claimed she had a three-month romance with Ford – a married father-of-two at the time – which she kept secret for 40 years. She told People magazine: ”It was so intense. It was Han and Leia during the week, and Carrie and Harrison during the weekend.” Fisher was 19 at the time of the alleged affair in 1976, 14 years younger than 33-year-old Ford.

Carrie Fisher had a sharp tongue and an abundance of charm and talent to spare, and was extremely smart; a talented actress, writer and comedienne with a very colourful personality that everyone loved.

On what made Star Wars such a hit “Movies were meant to stay on the screen, flat and large and colorful, gathering you up into their sweep of story, carrying you rollicking along to the end, then releasing you back into your unchanged life. But this movie (Star Wars) misbehaved. It leaked out of the theater, poured off the screen, affected a lot of people so deeply that they required endless talismans and artifacts to stay connected to it.” via The Princess Diarist.

On what kept her sane “I don’t think I was ever suicidal, and that’s probably because of drugs.” via Rolling Stone.

On finding happiness “Sometimes you can only find Heaven by slowly backing away from Hell.” via Wishful Drinking.

On parents wondering what to tell their children about her gold bikini in Return of the Jedi “Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didn’t like it. And then I took it off. Backstage.” via the Wall Street Journal.

Acting Dynasty: Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher & Billie Lourd 2011

But at only sixty, she left behind her daughter, Scream Queens actress Billie Lourd, 24; her Hollywood Legend mother, Debbie Reynolds, 84; her actor-producer brother, Todd Fisher,, 58; her half-sisters, Joely Fisher, 49, and Tricia Leigh Fisher, 48; and her French bulldog, Gary.

At 8:55am on the morning of Dec,27th, her eternal flame had vanished: but Carrie Fisher’s talents as a mother, actress, author, screenwriter, producer and theatrical force will live on in the universe and all of us. We salute you, Carrie Fisher, for being our Princess in a turbulent universe.