Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Stars Send Love to Carrie Fisher as ‘Star Wars’ Princess Clings to Life

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…

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and the protests on college campuses.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at editorial@forward.com, subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.

Exit mobile version