Todd Reynolds – now there’s a genuine hero
IN LIFE as in death, and indeed make-believe, there has never been a mother-daughter act like Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher. The cutie-pie Hollywood blonde and the dark-haired former wildchild were often at loggerheads but through the twists and turns of their colourful lives, they loved one another almost to distraction.
Their deaths, occurring one after the other, with the 84-year-old mother collapsing from a stroke some 15 minutes after uttering ‘I want to be with Carrie,’ reads like something dreamt up by a screenwriter.
Its timing makes it appear like the ultimate expression of grief – a postscript to Postcards From The Edge, the book Carrie wrote about an intense and symbiotic motherdaughter bond.
Throughout the upheavals of Reynolds’s long life, Carrie was her emotional mainstay.
She suffered the pain of betrayal and three broken marriages, of bankruptcy and the drying up of roles, which forced her to teach tap dancing for a living. Yet she said that outliving her daughter was her ‘greatest fear’. Carrie returned her devotion. She too had her share of failed marriages – one, to Paul Simon, was shortlived and tempestuous.
‘Paul didn’t want to have to deal with Carrie when she came pinballing home with Christ only knew what powders and pills sizzling inside her feverish brain,’ says his biographer.
CARRIE’S problems, ranging from early drug abuse and addiction to severe mental illness, took their toll on her mother who often blamed herself, once sadly observing: ‘If love alone could cure our children, they would always be well.’
But the course of true love rarely runs smoothly, particularly when two highly theatrical, articulate and independently minded women are involved.
They had a decade-long estrangement that hurt Debbie deeply.
In the end, though, they became next-door neighbours, occasionally taking their mutual appreciation society on the road.
They gave a heart-warming interview to Oprah Winfrey, in which they lavished praise on one another as tough survivors.
As Debbie’s son and Carrie’s brother Todd Fisher tweeted: ‘This is a beautiful love story to witness in my 58 years. I miss them both so much. Love is everlasting.’
Todd’s generosity is admirable as no one would blame him if he felt rejected or excluded by his mother and sister being such passionate soulmates – or if he bristled at his mother’s displays of favouritism.
In her book, Wishful Drinking, Carrie said that Todd turned out like a normal person, except for becoming a born-again Christian.
He manages his mother’s business and has worked behind the scenes on several projects connected to her showbiz career.
Recently, he produced Bright Lights, a documentary about his mother and sister, which is to be released on HBO.
He also has been married a few times but otherwise seems remarkably grounded and low-key.
It can’t be easy growing up in a household where every drama turns into a crisis, where there’s a revolving door of husbands and suitors and where, as Carrie once explained, the focus is always on the famous person, rather than the child.
IN THEIR latter years, Carrie and Debbie often spoke in public about their chaotic and crazy lives. They made it all sound so entertaining that they even turned Debbie’s ex-husbands into figures of fun. But living through constant melodramas, coping with the eccentricities and expectations of high-maintenance divas and feeling like an outsider can be ghastly and overwhelming too.
People who are forced to exist in the slipstream of flamboyant and charismatic stars must at times feel overlooked and frequently end up embittered and resentful.
Debbie Reynolds had an outstanding career. But when it comes to her private life, her greatest legacy is not just raising a daughter of such razor-sharp wit and blazing honesty as Carrie Fisher but a son Todd, who bore their remarkably close relationship with such loving acceptance and grace.