Carrie Fisher Dies at 60

Best known for her role as Princess Leia in Star Wars

December 27, 2016

Site Staff,

Carrie Fisher, best known as the iconic double-bun hairdo-wearing Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise, died Tuesday following a heart attack, Fox News reports. She was 60 years old.

Fisher, who also starred in a host of popular 1980s movies, suffered from bipolar disorder and drug addiction, and eventually became a mental health advocate. She had a medical emergency while on a flight from London to Los Angeles on Dec. 23, during which she stopped breathing. She was later taken to an intensive care unit.

She was born on October 21, 1956 to singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. She first appeared on the movie screen in 1975’s “Shampoo,” though her career took off when she was cast as Princess Leia Organan in the inaugural Star Wars film, which was released in 1977.

Fisher also publicly struggled with bipolar disorder and abused pain killers and cocaine. She said in 2008 that she received electroconvulsive therapy treatments every six weeks at one point. Fisher became an outspoken advocate for those battling mental illness and received an Annual Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism from Harvard in 2016.

“I find it unappealing,” Fisher said of her mental illness in a 2004 Los Angeles Times profile. “But there is a part of this illness that is funny. I don’t understand the stigma. I understand funny. It is what I do. Because I have the sense of humor I have, things don’t prey on me long. And that’s why I have it. If I didn’t, I would be…in pain. If my life weren’t funny, it would just be true, and that would be unacceptable.”