Star wars actress Carrie Fisher’s drug fuelled battle with men and her ‘smelly’ Princess Leia legacy that ‘followed her to her grave’

CARRIE FISHER was fuelled by two things as an intergalactic superstar — drugs and a sense of humour.

The Star Wars actress, who died on Tuesday aged 60, first smoked pot aged 13 after her movie star mother presented her with a bag of marijuana.

Cocaine, LSD and painkillers eventually followed — and she later wrote: “You know how they say that religion is the opiate of the masses? Well I took masses of opiates religiously.”

She felt she especially needed the drugs after she was cast as Princess Leia by director George Lucas at just 19.

Carrie later wrote jokingly of the experience: “Forty-three years ago, George Lucas ruined my life.”

She added that their Star Wars experience gave herself and her co-stars “a small merry band of stalkers, keeping us entertained for the rest of our unnatural lives — not to mention identities that would follow us to our respective graves like a vague, exotic smell.”

By the time of Star Wars follow-up The Empire Strikes Back in 1980 she was taking drugs on one of the film’s most famous sets.

She revealed: “We did cocaine on the set of Empire in the ice planet. I didn’t even like coke that much. It was just a case of getting on whatever train I needed to take to get high.”

In 2008, Carrie admitted she wished she had turned down the role, and would have done had she suspected the film would be anything other than a small B-movie.

She had decided early on, she explained, that she did not want the fame that had made her parents’ lives so difficult.

She said: “I saw the heartbreak of celebrity.”

Her actress mother Debbie Reynolds, most famous for Singin’ In The Rain, and crooner dad Eddie Fisher have been described as the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt of the Fifties.

When Carrie was just 18 months old, Eddie left the family to run off to marry Elizabeth Taylor — her mum’s best friend — in a blaze of publicity.

He was largely absent throughout her childhood but later formed a dysfunctional relationship centred around shared drug addiction.

Carrie explained: “Since we were both druggies, we did drugs together.”

Eventually she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder by her psychiatrist Dr Barry Stone, known as “the Stone”.

But the star did not take it well, later explaining in her typically entertaining style: “I did the only rational thing I could do in the face of such an insult — I stopped talking to the Stone, flew back to New York and married Paul Simon a week later.”

She and the singer-songwriter had dated since 1977 but their 1983 marriage was over in less than two years.

Carrie later admitted: “It was a fantastic wedding but a bad marriage.”

In her 2008 memoirs Wishful Drinking she recalled a typical exchange, when she was on the way to catch a plane.

After some bickering, she told Paul: “You’ll feel bad if I crash.” Shrugging, he replied: “Maybe not.”

Carrie always suspected that Paul’s gloomy 1990 track She Moves On was written about her.

It contains the lyrics: “And I’m afraid that I’ll be taken. Abandoned, forsaken. In her cold coffee eyes.”

In 1985, aged 28, Carrie overdosed on painkillers and had to have her stomach pumped.

And even in hospital she could not get away from men smitten by the metal bikini-wearing Princess Leia.

The doctor who did the procedure sent Carrie flowers with a note that read: “I can tell that you are a very warm and sensitive person.”

She later wrote: “All that from the contents of my stomach.”

Of the time she said, more seriously: “I was a smart person who did stupid things. I got into AA and I liked the principles of it but I still monkeyed around. I said that I was ‘lober’ — loaded and sober.”

For all her wisecracks, Carrie was well aware she was using drugs and booze to self-medicate the swinging emotions linked to bipolar disorder.

And her struggles made her able to help others who were having difficulties — including singer James Blunt.

In 2003 the former Army officer was unknown and had moved to LA to try to build a music career.

Carrie had met him in London a year earlier and offered him a place to stay as he tried to decide how to establish his new life.

She later explained: “He’d never been to therapy and I’ve had enough for both of us, so we started talking quite deeply about his time in the Army and the kind of impact that had had and so on. So I was kind of his shrink/landlady.

God, Harrison Ford was just so handsome

“We became very, very good friends by the end.”

Recalling his five-month stay, James has said: “Carrie fed me soup, showed me old movies and put a cardboard figure of her in Star Wars outside my room to protect me.”

He ended up recording debut album Back To Bedlam in her bathroom — and it went on to sell 11million copies.

Carrie had found love and stability with Hollywood talent agent Bryan Lourd — then lost it again.

The pair met in 1991 and had daughter Billie in 1992.

Carrie recalled: “Bryan took such good care of me that I thought, ‘This guy will make a good father’. And I was right.”

But a year after their little girl was born Bryan left Carrie for a man.

She later said: “I was humiliated and betrayed and I believed I’d somehow messed up. I don’t know if I believed I made him gay, but I’d failed and that’s all that really counts.”

Mum Debbie consoled her daughter in her own inimitable way, saying, “You know, dear, we’ve had every sort of man in our family — we’ve had horse thieves and alcoholics and one-man bands — but this is our first homosexual.”

While Simon and Bryan were Carrie’s great loves, it was her relationship with her Star Wars co-star Harrison Ford that would gain the most attention.

Hollywood rumours swirled that their sizzling on-screen chemistry had spilled into real life, and in her latest book, The Princess Diarist, published just last month, Carrie sensationally confirmed the love affair.

She was just 19 and Harrison 33 and married with two children, but they fell into bed together.

In the book she gushed: “God, he was just so handsome. No. No more than that. He looked like he could lead the charge into battle, take the hill, win the duel, be leader of the gluten-free world, all without breaking a sweat.”

The pair were reunited on the set of 2015’s Episode VII: The Force Awakens, more than three decades later.

She recalled: “When I first got there I was in my trailer and I heard Harrison’s footstep — I still know that sound.”

When viewers of the box office smash reboot took to social media to talk about how she looked, Carrie posted: “Please stop debating about whether or not I aged well. Unfortunately it hurts all three of my feelings. My body hasn’t aged as well as I have.”

And in an interview last month she admitted she had struggled with the ageing process, saying she was “not happy about being older, except what are the options?”

When asked if she feared death, she answered: “No. I fear dying. Anything with pain associated with it, I don’t like.

“But if I was gonna do it, I’d want someone like me around. And I will be there!”