Carrie Fisher

Her paternal grandparents were Jewish immigrants, but she was raised Protestant. Her younger brother is Todd Fisher and her half-sisters are actresses Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher. Joely and Tricia's mother is the singer-actress Connie Stevens.

When Carrie Fisher was two, her parents divorced, and her father married actress Elizabeth Taylor. The following year, her mother married shoe store chain owner Harry Karl, who secretly spent her life savings. It was assumed from an early age that Carrie would go into the family show business, and she began appearing with her mother in Las Vegas, Nevada at the age of 12.

She attended Beverly Hills High School, but she left to join her mother on the road. She appeared as a debutante and singer in the hit Broadway revival Irene (1973) starring her mother.

In 1973, Fisher enrolled at London's Central School of Speech and Drama, which she attended for 18 months. She made her film debut in the Columbia comedy Shampoo. The huge success of Star Wars made her internationally famous. The character of Princess Leia became a merchandising triumph; there were small plastic action figures of the Princess in toy stores across the United States. She appeared as Princess Leia in the 1978 made-for-TV movie, The Star Wars Holiday Special. She appeared again as Princess Leia in Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. She made her third and final appearance as Leia in the series in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi. After her appearance wearing a golden metal bikini, or slave girl outfit, that almost immediately rose to pop culture icon status, Fisher became a sex symbol for a short period.

Besides acting and writing original works, Fisher was one of the top script doctors in Hollywood, working on the screenplays of other writers. She has done uncredited polishes on movies starting with The Wedding Singer and Sister Act, and was hired by the creator of Star Wars, George Lucas, to polish scripts for his 1992 TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles. Her expertise in this area was why she was chosen as one of the interviewers for the screenwriting documentary Dreams on Spec in 2007. Though during an interview in 2004 she said that she no longer does much script doctoring.

Fisher was briefly engaged to the actor and comedian Dan Aykroyd. Fisher dated musician Paul Simon from 1977 until 1983, then was married to him from August 1983 to July 1984, and they dated again for a time after their divorce. She had a relationship with Creative Artists Agency principal and casting agent Bryan Lourd. They had one child together, Billie Catherine Lourd (born July 17, 1992). The couple's relationship ended when Lourd left to be in a homosexual relationship. Though Fisher has described Lourd as her second husband in interviews, according to a 2004 profile of the actress and writer, she and Lourd were never legally married. In 2005, R. Gregory Stevens, a Republican operative and advisor, was found dead in Fisher's house due to an overdose of OxyContin compounded by obstructive sleep apnea.

Fisher has publicly discussed her problems with drugs, her battles with bipolar disorder, and overcoming an addiction to prescription medication, most notably on ABC's 20/20 and The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive with Stephen Fry for the BBC.