Carrie Fisher survived great pain as celebrity

Associated Press

NEW YORK

No one could make us laugh through the pain like Carrie Fisher.

The daughter of Hollywood stars Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, and a survivor of early fame, drug addiction and bipolar disorder, she wrote with unsentimental wit and understanding about her private struggles and about an industry she was raised in but stood apart from.

Fisher, known to the world as Princess Leia of “Star Wars,” died Tuesday at 60, four days after falling ill aboard an airline flight. Media reports said 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,” she said in a confessional 2009 interview with The Associated Press.

The public fell in love with her twice: as Princess Leia and as the wry truth-teller of such books 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.

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.