Actress Carrie Fisher, who played Princess Leia in Star Wars, has died at age 60, daughter's publicist says.
"It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning," Simon Halls, a spokesperson for Fisher's family, said in a statement to People.
Fisher suffered a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles on Friday (US time), according to TMZ.
She was administered CPR until the flight landed. Her heart attack reportedly occurred 15 minutes before the plane was scheduled to arrive.
While Carrie Fisher was loved the world over from the moment she appeared as Princess Leia in a galaxy far, far away - but behind the scenes she was engaged in an epic battle with substance abuse.
Fisher died on Tuesday morning local time in Los Angeles after suffering whatwas described as a massive heart attack on a flight from London on Friday. She had been in London filming episodes of the Amazon-Channel 4 comedy Catastrophe.
She burst onto the scene in 1977 alongside Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill in the first three Star Wars movies.
Image 1 of 21: Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds hold their baby daughter, Carrie Frances Fisher, as the pose for a photo in the Hollywood area of Los Angeles. Photo / AP
The actress later revealed she'd had a drug problem since the age of 13, when she began smoking marijuana. She went on to use harder drugs such as LSD.
In an interview with the Herald-Tribune in 2013, Fisher said: "I never could take alcohol. I always said I was allergic to alcohol, and that's actually a definition to alcoholism - an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind ... By the time I was 21 it was LSD. I didn't love cocaine, but I wanted to feel any way other than the way I did, so I'd do anything."
While touring Sydney with her autobiography Wishful Drinking in 2010, Fisher revealed her drug habits were in full swing as she battled Darth Vader's forces playing Princess Leia in The Empire Strikes Back.
"We did cocaine on the set of Empire, in the ice planet," she confessed.
"I didn't even like coke that much, it was just a case of getting on whatever train I needed to take to get high."
During that same year, 1980, Fisher played the part of a manic ex-girlfriend in The Blues Brothers alongside her then boyfriend Dan Aykroyd, and John Belushi.
In one of Hollywood's most infamous stories of excess, Belushi recognised Fisher as a kindred spirit and brought her into his inner circle before his death from cocaine and heroin.
"Hanging out with them didn't help and John actually recognised it in me," she said.
"He said to me once, 'You and I, we're alike, we're not like them', referring to his wife and Danny (Aykroyd).
"Slowly I realised I was doing a bit more drugs than other people and losing my choice in the matter."
Carrie Fisher in a scene from the film, Blue Brothers.
In 2010, she recognised she would likely have died years earlier if she'd had more access to her vices.
"The stuff I liked was very hard to get hold of. If I'd been addicted to booze I'd be dead now because you just go out and get it," she said.
"Because my drugs were illegal, or the amounts I wanted to do were illegal, it made it more difficult for me to get in trouble."
Her drug use, personal insecurities and swinging stages of depression reportedly helped bring down her "explosive" marriage to musician Paul Simon in 1983.
According to Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon, a biography by Peter Ames Carlin, Fisher was "heavily involved" with drugs when the pair first met.
"Once they saw each other, no one else mattered to either of them," Carlin wrote.
"Carrie added velocity to [Paul's] life, a kind of wild energy that often set him alight and sometimes made him scream."
But the highs came with some plunging lows.
"[Paul] didn't want to have to deal with Carrie when she came pin-balling home with Christ only knew what powders and pills sizzling inside her feverish skull," Carlin wrote.
Singer-composer Paul Simon with actress Carrie Fisher. Photo / AP
"Then it would be her turn to crash back to earth, ashamed of her wild moods and indulgences, suddenly convinced she had neither the brains nor the maturity to keep up with her older genius boyfriend."
Though the stars divorced in 1984, their relationship continued on and off for several years.
