Writer, Actress Carrie Fisher Dies Age 60, Drowned by Moonlight, Strangled by Her Own Bra
(Twitter/@carrieffisher)
In her 2008 autobiography, Wishful Drinking, Carrie Fisher wrote her own obituary, and it’s better and funnier than any that could be written for her. In her book, Fisher wrote that on the first day of shooting Star Wars, George Lucas came up to her and said that she couldn’t wear a bra under her flowing, white dress. When she asked why, he said, “There’s no underwear in space.”
“He said it with such conviction too! Like he had been to space and looked around and he didn’t see any bras or panties or briefs anywhere,” Fisher wrote.
Lucas explained that there could not be underwear in space, because in space people would become weightless, and then their bodies expand, but their underwear doesn’t, so you’d get strangled by your own bra.
“Now I think that this would make for a fantastic obit,” Fisher wrote. “So I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”
Carrie Fisher was the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Debbie Reynolds is one of the biggest movie stars of all time, and Eddie Fisher was at the time a very famous pop star, but these days is mostly remembered for being Carrie Fisher’s father and being the guy at the center of the biggest scandal of Old Hollywood. (Then-famous Eddie Fisher left Debbie Reynolds–America’s Sweetheart and the mother of his toddler and new baby–for Elizabeth Taylor, Hollywood’s favorite on-screen “siren,” and it was basically exactly like the Jen-Brad-Angelina scandal, if Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt had had two small children at the time. Reynolds and Taylor transcended the scandal, became even bigger stars, and eventually became friends again and poked a bit of fun at their old drama. Eddie Fisher’s career was pretty much forgotten, and now he is remembered basically as just a bit player in the biographies of Reynolds, Taylor, and his daughter, Carrie Fisher. This is the totally bonkers world into which Carrie Fisher was born, and she mocked it and wrote about it in a way that nobody else could.)
Carrie Fisher became famous in her own right playing Princess Leia in Star Wars, and that’s where most of us first met her. She first appears as the princess who needs to be rescued, but it quickly becomes apparent that she’s a smart, tough, mouthy princess who is perfectly competent on her own and does a fair bit of rescuing herself. She returned to the Star Wars series in The Force Awakens, playing General Leia Organa, and at that point people started to say, “Wait a minute. I think Leia might be the toughest and most heroic character in this entire franchise.”
It’s true, too. Leia experienced the same tragedies that crushed everyone around her. She lost her mother, father, her entire planet and all the people on it, she lost her lover, her son, and her brother, and instead of putting on a monk’s hood and holing up in some swamp, she stepped up and lead the resistance. She loses everything, but she can’t take a day off. Someone has to save the universe, so she gets back to work.
Leia is such a fascinating character, because we just love her more and more as we get older, and as she gets older. When I was a little girl, I loved Princess Leia because she was tough and funny and I liked her hair. Now I want to be General Leia. She’s never stopped being an inspiration to people everywhere.
Her legacy was guaranteed just by playing Leia Organa, but Carrie Fisher’s work as a writer is just as important. She’s written frankly about mental illness, addiction, and Hollywood. In addition to her non-fiction books–Wishful Drinking, Shockaholic, and The Princess Diarist–she wrote several novels including Postcards on the Edge. She was also a screenwriter and Hollywood script doctor who helped fix up the screenplays for Sister Act and The Wedding Singer. Her Twitter was snarky and brilliant.
Carrie Fisher died this morning in Los Angeles at just 60 years old after suffering a heart attack Friday on a flight from London to California. She is survived by her mother, Debbie Reynolds, her daughter, Billie Lourd, as well as her brother and two half-sisters.
Writing obituaries is awful, and Carrie Fisher was much better at it than I am, so she passed away this morning, drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.
