Carrie Fisher

When Carrie was two years old, her father, Eddie Fisher, left her mother, Debbie Reynolds, for Elizabeth Taylor.  Carrie smoked, drank, did drugs, and had a wreck of a personal life.  Her only marriage lasted a year.  She had a daughter with a man who left her for another man.  Children of celebrities often have difficult lives because they are in the spotlight.  Carrie's life was more difficult than most.  In this day and age, 60 is entirely too young to die.

 

I was 16 when Return of the Jedi came to theaters and Carrie Fisher rocked it as Slave Leia.  Interestingly, her strangling of Jabba was her best moment in a movie where her character was otherwise mushy and mostly besotted with an increasingly inept Han Solo.  Leia was at her best in the first movie and just diminished from there.  Even in her return in The Force Awakens, she has lost the fire that made Leia so striking.  Consider how Leia reacts when brought before Tarkin on the Death Star:

Governor Tarkin, I should have expected to find you holding Vader's leash. I recognized your foul stench when I was brought on board.

Completely at the mercy of her enemies and still full of fire, showing nothing but contempt.  She and Han instantly have a hostile relationship during the rescue:

This is some rescue! You came in here, but didn't you have a plan for getting out?

And the hits kept coming:

Someone has to save our skins. Into the garbage chute, fly boy.

I don't know who you are or where you came from, but from now on you'll do as I tell you, okay?

Will someone get this big walking carpet out of my way?

You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought.

What happened to this Leia?  In The Empire Strikes Back, her hostility toward Han continues but is just an increasingly transparent device to deny that she is in love with a scoundrel.  By Return of the Jedi, she was softened to where she is left sitting on a log with a cute teddy bear.  However, it is revealed that she is Luke's sister and should also be strong in the force.  Though her son, Kylo Ren, is strong in the force, Leia appears to have developed no talents in the intervening decades.  The character had so much promise at the start and, so far as we know, it came to naught.

 

Sadly, Leia is Carrie's acting career.  She had a couple of forgettable movies but, like Mark Hamill, never became a star outside of Star Wars.  Her best non-Leia role was undoubtedly the Mystery Woman in The Blues Brothers.  She had this sweet girl-next-door face combined with the homicidal fury of the scorned woman.  Awesome!

 

Considering her appearance at the end of Rogue One, Carrie Fisher's Princess Leia may live on as a CGI character.  It reminds me of one of her witty comments regarding Star Wars merchandising:

 

I signed my likeness away. Every time I look in the mirror, I have to send Lucas a couple of bucks.

 

RIP