Carrier Fisher, the actress best known for her iconic role as Princess Leia in the Star Wars films, has died at age 60, People magazine reports.
Fisher's death was confirmed by family spokesperson Simon Halls, who released a statement to People on behalf of Fisher's daughter, Billie Lourd.
“It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning,” the statement read.
“She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly,” Lourd said in the statement. “Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers.”
Just days before, on Dec. 23, Fisher went into cardiac arrest during a flight from London to Los Angeles. The 60-year-old had to be removed from the flight and was rushed to a nearby hospital, where she was treated for a heart attack. Fisher died at the hospital, according to the report.
Fisher was brought up in the world of film, theater and television as the daughter of showbiz veterans Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, People notes. In 1973 Fisher enrolled in the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, spending over a year there studying acting. Two years later, however, Fisher was drawn back to Hollywood, making her film debut in Shampoo.
In 1977 she secured her now iconic role in Star Wars, filming the first installment of the beloved franchise when she was just 19.
In 1983 Fisher married musician Paul Simon, in a relationship that was cut short, as People notes, by depression, the actress's own drug use and other issues. The relationship did, however, continue on and off for several years after the couple divorced in 1984.
Fisher has been open about her substance abuse, explaining that she dabbled in drugs like cocaine and LSD and detailing her issues with addiction in her 1987 semiautobiographical novel, Postcards From the Edge.
“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,” Fisher told the Herald-Tribune in 2013, People notes. “So I didn’t do other kinds of drugs until I was about 20. Then, 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.”
In 1985 the star was diagnosed with bipolar disorder, and she subsequently became an advocate for mental-health awareness.
Fisher is survived by her daughter and her mother.
In an interview, Fisher stated that no matter how she died, she wanted her obituary to state that she "drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra."
May the force always be with her.
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Breanna Edwards is news editor at The Root. Follow her on Twitter.