Carrie Fisher is currently being treated in an intensive care unit in Los Angeles, following a reported heart attack on a flight from London to LA yesterday.
The 60-year old actress – who shot to global fame following her iconic role as Princess Leia Organa in the original Star Wars in 1977 – had been in the UK promoting her latest book, The Princess Diarist, in which she controversially revealed that she and her co-star Harrison Ford had an affair on the set of Star Wars.
She is being treated in the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, which is currently besieged by reporters and TV news crews. Her brother Todd Fisher told the Associated Press last night that his sister is receiving excellent care, but refused to classify her condition. “We have to wait and be patient,” he said. “We have so little information ourselves.”
Although most famous as an actress, Fisher is also an acclaimed author known for her disarmingly honest accounts of her struggles with drug addiction and mental illness. Her autobiographical book Postcards from the Edge was adapted into a movie starring Shirley McLaine and Meryl Streep in 1987. She also transformed her one-woman Broadway show, Wishful Drinking, into a book, which was in turn filmed by HBO.
In recent years, Fisher reprised her role as the leader of a galactic rebellion in three sequels, including last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens.