LAST WORD
A year after her death, Carrie Fisher is lovingly recalled by Rebecca Hawkes
Carrie Fisher, in her own words
The latest Star Wars film is heralded as the “best since Empire”. For fans of the franchise, however, a sadder date is approaching. December 27 will mark a year since the death of Carrie Fisher, adored for her role in the space saga as Princess (later General) Leia Organa — and adored, too, for her wit, wry humour, and honesty about her mental health and addiction struggles. Here’s a round-up of all the posthumous revelations and tributes that have helped her outrageous, compassionate spirit live on in 2017.
She loved ‘ugly children portraits’
The HBO documentary Bright Lights gave us a first glimpse at Fisher’s collection of old-fashioned (and, yes, pretty ugly) portraits of children, all of which she kept in the home she shared with her mother. Fisher would name the vintage portraits after different celebrities, claiming to see a resemblance — and referred to one, in the documentary, as “Shia LaBeouf as a Dutch underage prostitute”.
She wanted to die in a very specific way
Fisher, who died in hospital in Los Angeles following a collapse on a flight, famously stated: “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.”
On June 16, the LA county coroner’s office reveals that Fisher died of sleep apnea with complications, with medical experts unable to pinpoint an exact cause of death.
She lived her life ’bravely’
“Carrie was one-of-a-kind, brilliant, original,” says Harrison Ford. “Funny and emotionally fearless. She lived her life bravely.”
Just a few months earlier, Fisher had sensationally revealed in her autobiography that she and Ford had an “intense” affair while filming Star Wars together in 1976.
The news was eagerly seized upon, and fans delighted in the fact that the on-screen chemistry had indeed been for real.
For Fisher, however, the secret relationship with the married actor, who was 33 to her 19, was an emotionally raw time — something she discussed with honesty in her book.
She owned a Prozac urn
A private joint memorial service for Fisher and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, took place on January 4 — and Fisher’s ashes were interred in an urn shaped like a giant Prozac pill. The quirky anti depressant themed receptacle was a tribute to the star’s sense of humour and, according to her brother Todd Fisher, actually belonged to the actress. “It was a porcelain antique Prozac pill from the ’50s, one of Carrie’s prized possessions,” he told the Hollywood Reporter.
She had a cardboard cutout Leia guarding James Blunt
After Fisher’s death, one of the more unusual anecdotes shared about her came from singer James Blunt, with whom she enjoyed a long, close friendship (he even recorded his breakthrough album Back to Bedlam while staying at her home). “She put a cardboard cutout of herself as Leia outside my room, with her date of birth and date of death on her forehead,” Blunt said.
She slapped Oscar Isaac silly
In a May 2017 Vanity Fair interview about the making of The Last Jedi, younger cast members John Boyega and Daisy Ridley shared inspirational stories about Fisher; about how she encouraged Ridley to conquer her anxiety and embrace her newfound fame, and urged Boyega to rise above the small but nasty backlash that marred his introduction to the franchise.
Oscar Isaac, who plays pilot Poe Dameron, has a different anecdote to share. “We did this scene where Carrie had to slap me,” he told the magazine. “I think we did 27 takes in all and Carrie leaned into it every time, man. She loved hitting me.”
She had a Christmas tree all year round
Fisher kept a year-round Christmas tree going — a tradition apparently inspired by the actor Harold Lloyd. “My mom used to take us over to his house, and he had this giant Christmas tree living in his living room, and Carrie and I were little kids, and he said ‘Why can’t we have Christmas all year round?’ ” her brother Todd told Good Morning America. “And so that’s what happened and consequently it affected Carrie psychologically and now we have a Christmas tree all year round.”
She sent a sexual harasser a very special gift
In October 2017, the world was still reeling from the revelations about Harvey Weinstein being a sexual predator, and victims were speaking out about harassment across the industry, as the ugly extent of Hollywood’s abuse problem became clear. There was a resilient ray of light from beyond the grave, however, after people began sharing a story about how Fisher once sent a cow’s tongue to a Sony executive who harassed her friend, screenwriter Heather Robinson.
“I just saw [the executive] at Sony Studios. I knew he would probably be there, so I went to his office and personally delivered a Tiffany box wrapped with a white bow,” Fisher told Robinson in an e-mail (shared by the latter in a radio interview). “It was a cow tongue from Jerry’s Famous Deli with a note that said,
‘If you ever touch my darling Heather or any other woman again, the next delivery will be something of yours in a much smaller box!’”