TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Daughter of Hollywood stars Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher, known to the world as Princess Leia of "Star Wars," died at 60 on Tuesday December 27, 2016, after falling ill aboard an airline flight. Media reports said that the actress had suffered a heart attack.
"I do believe you're only as sick as your secrets. If that's true, I'm just really healthy," Fisher said in a confessional 2009 interview with The Associated Press.
Aside from her role as Princess Leia, Fisher was also known as an author of books such as "Postcards From the Edge," ''Wishful Drinking" and "The Princess Diarist," in which she revealed having an intense affair with "Star Wars" co-star Harrison Ford.
Fisher told plenty of secrets about others — about her parents' breakup when she was 2, about being advised by Warren Beatty on wearing a bra in "Shampoo," and about arguing with then-husband Paul Simon about whether it was better to be a man or a woman.
But she was toughest on herself and unafraid to turn trauma into humor. She became the most knowable of celebrities, with a great and generous gift for bringing us into her unusual life.
"One of the therapists came in to admit me and asked how long I had been a drug addict," she wrote in Postcards," her autobiographical novel that became a movie of the same name. "I said I didn't think I was a drug addict because I didn't take any one drug. 'Then you're a drugs addict,' she said. She asked if I had deliberately tried to kill myself. I was insulted by the question. I guess when you find yourself having overdosed, it's a good indicator that your life isn't working."
Fisher's film credits included a wide range of spoofs, musicals and romantic comedies, from "Austin Powers" and "The Blues Brothers" to "Hannah and Her Sisters" and "When Harry Met Sally ..." Meryl Streep was the star when "Postcards From the Edge," with a screenplay by Fisher, was adapted into a film of the same name in 1990. Shirley MacLaine played Streep's mother, the stand-in for Reynolds.
But in the mind of millions, Fisher was Princess Leia, with her now-iconic hair bagels and metal bikini. She uttered the immortal phrase "Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you're my only hope" in the original "Star Wars" in 1977.
Before casting Fisher, Director George Lucas, had initially considered Jodie Foster, Amy Irving and dozens of others for the role. However, Lucas said that he had been looking for an actress who could "hold her own" against her male co-stars.
Given the chance, she would have preferred to play Han Solo.
"When I first read the script I thought that's the part to be, always wry and sardonic," she told a gathering in England in 2015. "He's always that. I feel like a lot of the time Leia's either worried or pissed or, thank God, sort of snarky. But I'm much more worried and pissed than Han Solo ever was, and those aren't fun things to play."
AP
