FISHER, CARRIE FRANCES

FISHER, CARRIE FRANCES (1956– ), U.S. actress and author. Born in Beverly Hills, Calif., to singer eddie fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds and raised by her mother and shoe retailer Harry Karl following her parents' highly publicized divorce, Fischer attended the Professional Children's School in Los Angeles. She dropped out of Hollywood High School to join the Broadway musical Irene (1972) and made her film debut in Shampoo (1975), opposite Warren Beatty. She went on to study at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London for 18 months. After an audition with George Lucas, Fisher landed the leading role of Princess Leia in the blockbuster film Star Wars (1977) as well as the next two films in the series, The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). Her connection to the original cast of the comedy TV show Saturday Night Live led her to take a small part as the jilted girlfriend of John Belushi's character in The Blues Brothers (1980) and a role as Chevy Chase's love interest in Under the Rainbow (1981). She appeared in smaller roles in such films as The Man with One Red Shoe (1985), Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), and When Harry Met Sally (1989). Fisher married singer paul simon in 1983 after a seven-year relationship, but the couple divorced 11 months later in 1984. In 1985, Fisher nearly overdosed after wrestling with a Percodan addiction. At that time she entered a detox clinic and has remained drug-free since. The experience would later turn up in her 1987 bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge, which won the Los Angeles Pen Award and was adapted as a feature film in 1990 by director mike nichols and starred Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine. Postcards was followed by the novels Surrender the Pink (1990), Delusions of Grandma (1994), and The Best Awful There Is (2004). Fisher continued to work in Hollywood as a script doctor and took on small parts in such films as Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997), Scream 3 (2000), and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle (2003). In 2004, Fisher launched Conversations with Carrie Fisher, a cable TV talk show on the Oxygen network. (Adam Wills (2nd ed.)