Short answers, pulled from the story.
Carrie Fisher is best known for playing Princess Leia in the original Star Wars films from 1977 to 1983. She reprised the role in The Force Awakens (2015), The Last Jedi (2017), and The Rise of Skywalker (2019), the latter using unreleased footage shot before her death.
Carrie Fisher died on the 27th of December 2016, at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles at age 60. She had suffered a medical emergency on United Airlines Flight 935 from London to Los Angeles on the 23rd of December 2016, and was placed on a ventilator upon arrival. The Los Angeles County coroner's office stated in June 2017 that the exact cause of death could not be determined.
Carrie Fisher wrote several novels, including Postcards from the Edge (1987), Surrender the Pink (1990), Delusions of Grandma (1993), and The Best Awful There Is (2004). Her nonfiction works include Wishful Drinking (2008), Shockaholic (2011), and The Princess Diarist (2016), the last of which earned her a posthumous Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album.
Carrie Fisher was one of the top script doctors in Hollywood, doing uncredited polishes on other writers' screenplays over a roughly fifteen-year stretch from 1991 to 2005. She worked on films including Hook, Sister Act, The Wedding Singer, and the Star Wars prequel scripts. A May 1992 Entertainment Weekly article described her as one of the most sought-after doctors in town.
Carrie Fisher discussed her bipolar disorder diagnosis and addictions openly in interviews and in her writing, including on programs such as 20/20 and The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive with Stephen Fry. She described her drug use as self-medication to dial down the manic aspect of her condition. In 2016, Harvard College awarded her its Annual Outstanding Lifetime Achievement Award in Cultural Humanism for her outspokenness on mental illness and addiction.
Carrie Fisher's parents were singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds. They divorced in 1959 after it was revealed that Eddie Fisher had been having an affair with Elizabeth Taylor. Debbie Reynolds died on the 28th of December 2016, the day after Carrie Fisher's death.