My Hollyweird life! She was every teenage boy’s fantasy
yet her husband left her for a man...Amazingly, Carrie Fisher still sees the funny side

By Lina Das for MailOnline
Updated: 12:20 EDT, 16 April 2011

With her slinky outfits, feisty attitude and doughnut hairstyle, Carrie Fisher set pulses racing in geeks the world over as Princess Leia in Star Wars. The infamous scene in  Return Of The Jedi, in which she is chained up and forced to wear a slavegirl metal bikini by the villain Jabba the Hutt, was so memorable it even found its way into an episode of Friends, when Ross asked Rachel to don the same attire.

Not something Carrie would ever put up with from one of her own boyfriends, one presumes. ‘God, no!’ she laughs.‘They wouldn’t have the nerve! – though I should have done it for Paul [Simon, the musician, her first husband] as a joke. But after Star Wars, a guy came up to me and said, “I’ve been thinking of you every day from when I was 12 to 22.” How do you even respond to that?’

When you think of the life Carrie has had, 75 minutes seems barely long enough to do justice to it. But that is the length of the film, being screened this week, of the stage show based on her autobiography, Wishful Drinking. 

Still strong: Carrie Fisher's autobiography turned stage show Wishful Drinking details a career punctuated with highs and struggles with drug abuse, manic depression and a spell in a mental hospital

The daughter of film star Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher, Carrie was under the spotlight from the moment she was born – the attention only intensifying when Fisher left Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor in what was the Brad-Jennifer-Angelina love triangle of the 1950s. With such turbulent beginnings, it’s little surprise her life followed such a chequered path.

That part in Star Wars and a successful career as a novelist and screenwriter have alternated with periods of drug abuse, struggles with manic depression and a spell in a mental hospital. Her marriage to Paul Simon lasted less than a year, and her second husband, Hollywood agent Bryan Lourd, left her for a man. As autobiography material it couldn’t have been richer, and despite its funny moments, the story is very sad. ‘My ability to write helps me get through,’ she says. ‘But being able to make light of situations doesn’t mean they’re light.’ 

We’re in the cavernous cosiness of Carrie’s Beverly Hills bedroom. It’s a home crammed with assorted buffalo heads, Star Wars memorabilia and even a photo of Carrie chatting with the man who stole her second husband, on top of her piano. ‘My daughter Billie (by Bryan Lourd) asks me why I keep it there and I say, “Because it’s something I made it through.” It’s a failure I learnt from. Also, it’s funny,’ she chuckles.‘Hollywood weirdness at its best.’ Dressed all in black and perched on her bed, Carrie, now 54, is heavier today than in her Princess Leia days, although even that fact is lampooned in her show (‘Fans will say, “What’s happened to Carrie Fisher? She used to be so hot. Now she looks like Elton John.”’).

Her mother lives next door –‘although there’s a hill between us so we really have to make a commitment to visit one another’ – and Carrie says Elizabeth Taylor’s death hit Debbie Reynolds hard. ‘She and Elizabeth became stars together and, even though they weren’t speaking during the break-up, they’d become friends again. It’s always sad and scary when a friend and contemporary dies.’ 

Screen siren: Carrie Fisher set pulses racing as Princess Leia in the 1977 Star Wars, pictured here with Luke Hamill and Harrison Ford

Carrie was just 18 months old when her father left Debbie for Elizabeth, who in turn left Fisher for Richard Burton. They had all previously been good friends – Debbie was Elizabeth’s matron-of-honour at her wedding to film producer Mike Todd, and Fisher
was Todd’s best man.

When Todd died in a plane crash in 1958, Debbie sent her husband to console Elizabeth – and he never came back.

‘I asked Elizabeth years later why she’d loved my father,’ says Carrie, ‘and she said, “We kept Mike alive”. They both loved Mike, so they grieved together… just with no clothes on! My father said Elizabeth was “the source” – she had this extraordinary power and everything radiated from and into her. My father never regretted that episode at all.’

Carrie was a teenager when she learnt about the whole saga after finding a collection of cuttings hidden at their family home.

‘Someone had put it together in a scrapbook and sent it to my mother,’ says Carrie. ‘I was shocked, as it quoted Elizabeth saying things like, “You can’t break up a good marriage.” But I didn’t feel bitter towards her – she didn’t leave us, after all.’

By the mid-1990s, Carrie and Elizabeth had forged a close friendship after a semi-comic meeting cleared the air. ‘I’d heard she’d said my mother was a goody two-shoes, and when I saw Elizabeth at a party, I told her, “That’s not cool.” She replied, “I’m going to push you in the pool”, so I said, “OK”, and she did. I suppose it was my way of telling her she couldn’t hurt me any more, and from then on things were great between us. She was fun, kind and great with kids. She had great Easter parties with a big hunt for prizes, and my daughter loved those. I remember one time I went out with her and Michael Jackson and Shirley MacLaine. At one point, Shirley and I were sitting on the floor like their handmaidens! Michael understood her – she liked jewellery, and he could afford to give it to her.’

By the time she died, Elizabeth had also buried the hatchet with Debbie Reynolds, and Carrie wrote the comedy film These Old Broads for the two legendary stars. ‘They’d got together for a readthrough, and started saying my dad had a flat ass and they just fell about laughing. But he was really game about it. I think he still loved Elizabeth
and he probably liked the attention. Here were these two beautiful women he’d been married to still talking about him 50 years later.’

Eddie Fisher died last September, aged 82. Carrie saw her parents together only four or five times as a child, and although she admits that his abandonment caused her to be ‘actively hurt in my teens and 20s’, it was hard for her to be angry with him for long.

‘He was sweet, charming and easy to love, which is why he was so successful with women (Fisher was married five times).’ Carrie’s intense relationship with her father even extended to sharing drugs. ‘Since we were both druggies, we did drugs together,’ she admits. Didn’t Carrie want her father to act like a proper, severe father towards her?

‘No. I wanted more of a dad who came home and went, “Hi kitten, how was your day?”. But by the end, I finally figured out how to have a relationship with him, and that was to mother him. He’d been a celebrity from a young age and so he was always being babied. So when I took care of him towards the end, he appreciated it because he knew he didn’t deserve it.’ 

Child star: The daughter of film star Debbie Reynolds (right) and singer Eddie Fisher, Carrie was under the spotlight from the moment she was born

Carrie’s mother married twice more. Her second marriage, to shoe company boss Harry Karl, ended after he brought prostitutes to the house and stole Debbie’s money; and her third marriage, to property developer Richard Hamlett, ended after he stole what was left of her cash. This prompted Debbie to tell her daughter, ‘Eddie’s starting to look like the good husband.’ So, did Carrie repeat her mother’s mistakes in picking unsuitable men? ‘Well, Paul didn’t cheat on me and there was no money issue with him or Bryan,’ she says. ‘But there were issues. There always are.’

After studying acting at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama, Carrie made her Hollywood film debut with Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in the comedy Shampoo. Then, in 1976, she won the part of Princess Leia in Star Wars. The role catapulted her to superstardom and into the daydreams of nerds the world over. Though men loved Carrie’s curves, she herself did not.

‘I didn’t ever think I was pretty then, and I think that stems from the insecurity of my father leaving. I weighed 7st 7lb and they asked me to lose 10lb, which I couldn’t. I carried about 50 of those pounds in my face, so of course they got me a hairstyle with those braids that further broadened my already wide face.’

Carrie and Paul Simon dated for six years throughout the Star Wars movies, eventually
marrying in 1983 only to divorce 11 months later. ‘It was a fantastic wedding, but a bad marriage,’ she says. ‘We’re not good friends now.’ Carrie’s marriage to Bryan Lourd
ended in 1994 after three years and one child – their 18-year-old daughter Billie. In Lourd she thought she’d found the security lacking from her childhood, only for him to leave her for a man. ‘People ask if it lessens the blow that he left me for a man,’ says Carrie, ‘because it’s a rejection of my gender and so isn’t personal. But I don’t care what people say – I was humiliated and betrayed and I believed I’d somehow messed up. I don’t know if I believed I made him gay, but I’d failed and that’s all that really counts.

Unstoppable: Carrie has produced a stream of acclaimed work, including the semi-autobiographical novel - and later film - Postcards From The Edge

‘Bryan’s a good man in lots of ways. It took a while to adjust, but then we started going on vacations – Billie, me, Bryan and this guy he was seeing. That’s how
much we loved her. I wanted Billie to see we could be friends, because I never had that with my own parents. I’m glad I got Billie a good dad; he’s everything my father wasn’t – including gay!’ she grins ruefully.

That Carrie manages to mine humour out of such painful episodes speaks volumes about her resilience. She is equally candid about her struggles with bipolar disorder, her use of electroshock therapy and her abuse of drugs. ‘I didn’t really do drugs till I was 23,’ she says, ‘and then it was flat out till I was 28. I did drugs because they alter you in a way you can’t alter yourself if you’re not comfortable in your own skin.’

Men, though, were never an addiction. She admits with a laugh that she is ‘not really cooperative, and that’s tough for a man to deal with. It’s hard for men to be a co-pilot, and there’s probably too much of me for men to handle. I always feel I drive them crazy.’ Would she marry again? ‘No,’ she says, unequivocally.

The only time Carrie becomes upset is when talking about the effects her drugs and mental health crises have had on her daughter. ‘How many eight-year-olds have to visit their mum in a mental hospital? I’m not one for regrets, but I do regret anything I did that made life hard for my daughter. But after thinking I’m an idiot, she now thinks I’m funny, which is great. She’s just really bright and pretty and hilarious and has a great voice. She’s a DNA jackpot!’

Carrie has produced a steady stream of acclaimed work from her troubles, including the semi-autobiographical novel – and later film starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine – Postcards From The Edge. What hasn’t destroyed Carrie has undoubtedly made her stronger. ‘Survivor – it’s a term I don’t really like,’ she says, ‘but I reluctantly agree that I am one.’

Wishful Drinking, Thursday, 10.15pm, Sky Atlantic HD. The book is published by Pocket Books, £6.99.