Please Rewind Talent Wall

Carrie Fisher

Carrie Fisher brought together qualities that rarely sit so comfortably in one career: movie-star presence, sharp comic timing and a writer’s instinct for cutting through appearances. Born on October 21, 1956, she began as a reader and poetry writer before appearing on Broadway with her mother, Debbie Reynolds, in the 1973 revival of Irene. Her film debut followed in Shampoo in 1975. Two years later, Fisher became Princess Leia in Star Wars, opposite Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford. She returned for The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, giving Leia an authority and impatience that made the character far more than someone waiting to be rescued. Decades later, Fisher reprised the role in The Force Awakens and completed her work on The Last Jedi shortly before her death in 2016. She later appeared in The Rise of Skywalker through previously unreleased footage. Leia may have been her defining screen role, but Fisher was consistently good at arriving in a film and changing its temperature. She played the determined Mystery Woman in The Blues Brothers, appeared in Hannah and Her Sisters and brought dry, clear-eyed wit to When Harry Met Sally... Her television work included 30 Rock, which earned her an Emmy nomination, and Catastrophe, which brought another posthumous nomination. Fisher’s writing career was every bit as important to her body of work. Her first novel, Postcards from the Edge, became a bestseller, and she adapted it into the 1990 film starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine. She also spent years as a Hollywood script doctor, polishing dialogue and screenplays, often without credit. Her one-woman show and autobiographical book Wishful Drinking turned personal history into unsentimental comedy. The later memoir The Princess Diarist drew on diaries kept during the original Star Wars films, and its audiobook earned a posthumous Grammy. Across acting, fiction, screenwriting and performance, Fisher’s greatest tool was the same: a voice that could be candid, funny and exact all at once.