Carrie Fisher (1956-2016) : a memory by: GF Willmetts
When we heard Carrie Fisher had had a heart attack on her return to America, I’m sure we all thought she’d pull through. After all, in this day and age, sixty is now seen as being quite young. It was a shock tonight to learn it wasn’t to be.
I had a look at her IMdB bibliography and was rather surprised how many films and TV series she had been involved with acting in outside of the ‘Star Wars’ franchise and this was apart from being a script doctor and I had seen several of those. It does tell that she was never defined by one part but used it as a stepping off point for other things.
As a Science Fiction icon, Carrie Fisher is best remembered as Princess Leia Organa and like all people from the original ‘Star Wars’ trilogy, instantly recognisable around the world. Certainly having a determined lead there, willing to get into the fight than be protected ensured the SF template for women in distress was put to rest and laid the foundation for what followed. She might have downplayed her participation with a wink at the end of ‘A New Hope’ but she was still a princess as well.
It was tempting to select photographs from the ‘Star Wars’ films to present here but as she wasn’t keen on the hair buns in the first film or even the fancy bikini of the second film, it felt a little inappropriate although I bet the media will use them the most anyway.
Even so, I suspect many of you will have rewatched ‘A New Hope’ again tonight with a heavy heart but always with good memories of a princess in a galaxy, far, far away.
GF Willmetts
27 December 2016
IIRC, nasty heart trouble ran in Carrie’s family (from dad Eddie Fisher’s side), so going early isn’t retroactively a surprise. If you *do* have a heart attack with that family history, you are more likely to not survive it.
Ray Feist mentioned that Carrie was a seriously good writer, and the go-to script doctor from sometime in the 80’s. A “star” screenwriter would come to grief due to booze/cocaine/poor choice of sex partner, and Carrie would get called in to complete the script and get the film out the door. It was all uncredited due to the reasons she got the call, but she was very well paid, thank you.
There are various rumors floating around about hit films you may have seen that Carrie had a hand in, but as Ray put it “Those who are talking don’t know. Those who *do* know aren’t talking.”
Way too young, but she leaves behind an enviable body of work, even if her name isn’t on some of it.
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Dennis