The ashes of Carrie Fisher, famously known for playing Princess Leia in the Star Wars franchise, were carried in an urn shaped like a giant Prozac pill. Fisher was known to be open about her life and her struggle with depression and mental illness, which led her to a pill-fueled addiction.
According to her brother, Todd Fisher, and her daughter, Billie, it was “where she would want to be,” as the actress had bought the pill many years ago and had it as a very loved piece of her home.
Carrie Fisher, 60, and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, 84, died one day after the other last December.
The service was held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, Los Angeles. The only public details revealed were about the unusual shape of the urn. Other than that, the service remained largely in private.
Fisher’s lifelong fight with mental illness
The decision was perhaps a nod to bringing the topic of mental health and addiction to the table. Fisher was outspoken about her struggles, revealing that she suffered from bipolar disorder. According to an interview with ABC back in 2000, she had two personalities called Roy and Pam.
“One is Roy, rollicking Roy, the wild ride of a mood. And Pam, sediment Pam, who stands on the shore and sobs … Sometimes the tide is in, sometimes it’s out.”
Bipolar disorder is characterized by drastic mood swings, mainly caused by chemical imbalances in the brain. These are oftentimes seen as manic and depressive episodes, where the first corresponds to a high energy and self-confidence, and the second is a loss of energy and constant lethargy. There is no definitive cure for bipolar disorder, but it can be treated with mood stabilizers and anti-depressants.
Fisher grew up surrounded by stardom, living with her mother Debbie and her father singer Eddie Fisher. But when she was just a child, Eddie abandoned her family with none other than Elizabeth Taylor, creating a broad media scandal. Her family was broken and Carrie Fisher started to suffer from a mental instability that would haunt her for most of her life.
Fisher starred as Princess Leia in Star Wars: Episode IV when she was 19 years old. When it was time for Episode VI, she was already heavily into sleeping pills. Doctors told her that she was manic depressive, and not entirely a drug addict. Fisher made herself believe that she was indeed an addict because she could not control herself, delving to a greater spiral of mental stress.
One of her most widely known compilations of her experiences is Wishful Drinking, released in 2008 as a memoir accounting for her struggles with life in Hollywood:
“So having waited my entire life to get an award for something, anything (okay fine, not acting, but what about a tiny little award for writing? Nope), I now get awards all the time for being mentally ill. I’m apparently very good at it and am honored for it regularly. Probably one of the reasons I’m such a shoo-in is that there’s no swimsuit portion of the competition. Hey, look, it’s better than being bad at being mentally ill, right? How tragic would it be to be runner-up for Bipolar Woman of the Year?”
Source: Yahoo Movies