{"id":1266,"date":"2016-12-27T13:58:41","date_gmt":"2016-12-27T21:58:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lauragrey.com\/?p=1266"},"modified":"2016-12-28T12:40:40","modified_gmt":"2016-12-28T20:40:40","slug":"carrie-fisher-actress-writer-freedom-fighter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/?p=1266","title":{"rendered":"Carrie Fisher: Actress, Writer, Freedom Fighter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\"carrie\"<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
We all know that the witty, insightful actress and writer<\/a> Carrie Fisher, who died today at age 60, began her career as an actress in the 1970s. She became a Hollywood star at age 20 when Star Wars<\/em> was released in 1977. While many know that she went on to write books, screenplays and stage shows, far fewer people know that she was also a sought-after Hollywood script doctor<\/a>. During the 1990s, she was frequently hired to repair weak screenplays, working on such movies as Hook<\/em>, Sister Act<\/em>, Lethal Weapon 3<\/em> and The Wedding Singer<\/em>. The work was lucrative, but she was never credited by name as a writer for any of the films whose scripts she saved. (She is said to have been one of the script doctors who tried but failed to bring life to all three of the Star Wars<\/em> prequel scripts, too.) <\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n

Fisher’s writing talents are evident from her memoirs, in her one-woman theatrical show, Wishful Drinking<\/em><\/a>, and in the screenplay based on her autobiographical novel Postcards from the Edge<\/em><\/a>. In late 2001, when the nation was deeply shaken after the September 11 attacks and frightened lawmakers began urging each other to limit Americans’ freedoms, Carrie Fisher donated an autographed copy of the screenplay for Postcards from the Edge<\/em> to an auction of celebrity artifacts to benefit the American Civil Liberties Union<\/a>. I was the winner of that auction, and my Carrie Fisher-autographed script is one of my prized possessions. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Fisher grew up as Hollywood royalty, the child of popular singer Eddie Fisher<\/a> and America’s sweetheart, Debbie Reynolds<\/a>, and was later the stepdaughter of Elizabeth Taylor and wife of musician Paul Simon. Despite such privilege, she also grew up seeing the seedy side of fame: her parents’ scandalous and very public divorce (her father left Debbie for Elizabeth); her father’s addiction to speed; and her mother’s financial catastrophes brought on by marriages to faithless gamblers who stole her money, diverted Debbie’s savings to their mistresses and brought prostitutes into their home.<\/p>\n

In Fisher’s first big film role (in Warren Beatty’s film Shampoo<\/em>,) she\u00a0 played a jaded teenager<\/a> who propositions the much older character played by Beatty.\u00a0 Her character’s world-weary attitude and hard-edged directness in Shampoo<\/em> show up again in her portrayals of Princess Leia in the first three Star Wars<\/em> films. By her twenties, she was self-medicating and addicted to drugs. It was only when she learned that she had bipolar disorder that the reasons for her mood swings, depressions and hunger for intoxicants became clear to her. She sought to wean herself from her addictions and began to divert her insecurities and keen observations into her writing.<\/p>\n

To the benefit of her readers, she shared her stories of her own depression, self-loathing, addictions and mental disorders, first through her art, then through memoirs and interviews. Fisher fought to destigmatize mental illness<\/a> and encouraged people to be honest with themselves and others, to get help and to accept themselves as imperfect but worthy of love and understanding. For a woman who had grown up believing that putting on a perfect fa\u00e7ade and never letting the world see her sweat was of paramount importance, her journey toward self-acceptance and her willingness to tell the world of her flaws and illness<\/a> and her ultimate freedom from addiction was a brave one.<\/p>\n

From her earliest days, Fisher had a steely confidence on screen and spoke in an authoritative voice that didn’t jibe with her fresh, youthful beauty. Her world-weary delivery and seeming steeliness made her a compelling Leia Organa. On screen she was a princess and the leader of a galactic rebellion, but behind her seeming confidence was enormous self-doubt. While her insecurities led her to dangerously self-defeating impulses in her youth, they also brought her to\u00a0 deep insights which she used to fuel the raw, honest, hilarious but brutally true stories she wrote of her life. She showed us how smart, beautiful, rich and talented people could be just as fearful, self-defeating and confused as the rest of us.<\/p>\n

Carrie Fisher was a woman who spent her life creating fictions through her acting and writing, but she lived her own life as fiercely and honestly as she was able. She laid herself bare in her writings, one-woman shows and interviews, including her recent discussion of her life and work with NPR’s Terry Gross<\/a>. She laughed at herself before anyone else had a chance to, and let us know that it was okay to fail, to fear, to fall. Even a Hollywood princess<\/a> is only human.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Just this year, the Harvard Humanist Hub gave Fisher the Outstanding Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism<\/a>, saying that “her forthright activism and outspokenness about addiction, mental illness, and agnosticism have advanced public discourse on these issues with creativity and empathy.”<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
In Carrie Fisher’s memory, I’m making a donation to the ACLU today, because the leader of the rebel alliance would want us to keep up the good fight against the demagogues who hope to round us up, wall us off and shut us up. Carrie Fisher was, after all, the woman who embodied Princess Leia Organa, leader of the rebellion against the ruthless Empire. Making a donation to keep civil liberties safe seems like a small but meaningful thing to do to honor someone who spoke her mind, made us laugh and brought us so much joy through her work. Won’t you join me? <\/a><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  We all know that the witty, insightful actress and writer Carrie Fisher, who died today at age 60, began her career as an actress in the 1970s. She became a Hollywood star at age 20 when Star Wars was released in 1977. While many know that she went on to write books, screenplays and … Continue reading Carrie Fisher: Actress, Writer, Freedom Fighter<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,25],"tags":[1027,1022,1024,1025,1028,1019,688,1021,1029,1023,1020,1026,66],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1266"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1278,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1266\/revisions\/1278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lauragrey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}