Stars Send Love to Carrie Fisher as ‘Star Wars’ Princess Clings to Life
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
Friends and colleagues of Hollywood actress Carrie Fisher shared their hopes for a swift recovery for the “Star Wars” star on Saturday, a day after she was taken to a Los Angeles intensive care unit.
Fisher, 60, suffered heart problems during a flight on Friday from London, where she had been shooting the third season of the British television comedy “Catastrophe.” Her family had said she remained in the intensive care unit on Friday.
New details on her condition were not immediately available on Saturday, and a spokeswoman at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center declined to comment, citing patient confidentiality laws.
“I’m shocked and saddened to hear the news about my dear friend,” Harrison Ford told The Hollywood Reporter on Saturday morning. Ford played the swashbuckling Han Solo opposite Fisher’s intrepid Princess Leia in the original 1977 “Star Wars” film and its sequels. “Our thoughts are with Carrie, her family and friends.”
Fisher caused a stir in November with the disclosure that she had a three-month love affair with Ford during the making of “Star Wars.” Fisher revealed the secret to People magazine while promoting her new memoir, “The Princess Diarist,” just before it went on sale.
Her friend William Shatner, best known for his role in the television series “Star Trek,” posted an old photograph on Twitter of him and Fisher embracing, writing that she was “all I want for Christmas.”
Other celebrities, including Ellen DeGeneres and Christina Applegate, took to social media to share their sadness, while the singer and actress Bette Midler described Fisher as “hilarious on paper and in person, and just plain beloved.”
Fisher reprised her Princess Leia role in two sequels and returned last year in Disney’s reboot of the franchise, “The Force Awakens,” appearing as the more matronly General Leia Organa, leader of the Resistance movement fighting the evil First Order.
Fisher’s career was dogged by substance abuse and mental health issues. She underwent treatment in the mid-1980s for cocaine addiction and later wrote the bestselling novel “Postcards From the Edge” based on her experience. The book was adapted into a 1990 movie starring Meryl Streep. Fisher has also said she was briefly hospitalized in 2013 due to bipolar disorder.—Reuters### Your title here…
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