Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher was born October 21, 1956, to singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds, stepping into Shampoo at nineteen before Princess Leia made her inescapable in 1977. The original Star Wars trilogy ran through 1983, but the role never left - she'd return for The Force Awakens in 2015, The Last Jedi in 2017 (released after her death), and The Rise of Skywalker in 2019 using old footage. Between those bookends she built a second career few saw: script doctor to Hook, Sister Act, The Wedding Singer, and quietly, several Star Wars films themselves. An Entertainment Weekly piece in 1992 called her "one of the most sought-after doctors in town." She also wrote semi-autobiographical novels like Postcards from the Edge, adapted her own screenplay (BAFTA nomination), and turned her one-woman play Wishful Drinking into a book and an Emmy-nominated special. She spoke openly about bipolar disorder and addiction, and appeared with Reynolds in the 2016 Cannes documentary Bright Lights about their tangled bond. Fisher died of sudden cardiac arrest on December 27, 2016, four days after a medical emergency on a flight from London - sixty years old, still in harness.