Carrie Fisher, the actress best known for playing Princess Leia in Star Wars, has died at 60, her family announced Tuesday. Her daughter, Scream Queens actress Billie Lourd, confirmed the news in a statement to People:
“It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning,” the statement, delivered via spokesperson Simon Halls, reads. “She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly. Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers.”
Fisher had gone into cardiac arrest on a flight from London to Los Angeles on Friday; she was rushed to the hospital where she was placed in intensive care. (Earlier this week, her mother Debbie Reynolds had tweeted she was in a “stable condition.”)
The daughter of Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, she became an instant household name with her role as Princess Leia. She also starred in films like Shampoo, The Blues Brothers, and When Harry Met Sally, and reprised her role as Leia in The Force Awakens last year. This year, Fisher had just released a memoir, The Princess Diarist, in which she details her time on the Star Wars set and her affair with costar Harrison Ford. Her semi-autobiographical novel, 1987’s Postcards from the Edge, was turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep. In another book, Wishful Drinking, Fisher wrote that she wanted her obituary to claim that she died because she “drowned in moonlight, strangled by [her] own bra.” (This was prompted by George Lucas’s puzzling logic about why Princess Leia wouldn’t wear a bra in space.)
Fisher was always open about her struggles with substance abuse and bipolar disorder, as well as her various high-profile relationships. She married Paul Simon in 1983 and divorced him the following year, though their relationship was on-again, off-again for a while after that. She had Lourd, her only child, during her relationship with talent agent Bryan Lourd.
Her death was immediately met with an outpouring of grief on social media from fans, colleagues, and loved ones.
cosmopolitan.com
