Looking at Carrie Fisher's life in pictures

Carrie Fisher, who made Star Wars character Princess Leia so popular, passed into the ages on December 28. Fisher, who made a mark as a tremendous writer and character actress, was in intensive care unit after she had a heart attack while on a flight from London to Los Angeles on December 23.

Fisher made her own career, enjoying her biggest on-screen popularity as Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy before going on to establish herself as an acerbic, truth-telling witty writer with such books as Postcards From the Edge.

Here's looking at pictures from her life.

Born to actress Debbie Reynolds and singer Eddie Fisher in 1956, Carrie grew up with the best of Hollywood around her.

Fisher's parents divorced when she was just two, after her father left Reynolds for actress Elizabeth Taylor. 

Fisher grew up in Beverly Hills and first stepped onstage when she was 15 to join her mother in the Broadway musical Irene.

She made her film debut in Warren Beatty's Shampoo (1975), playing a precocious teen who seduces Beatty's sexually adventurous hairstylist.

Her role in Star Wars came in 1977, the experience she recently detailed in memoir, The Princess Diarist. She was only 19 when the first installment of the popular sci-fi franchise was filmed.

In addition to the Star Wars films, and Fisher starred in 1980's The Blues Brothers, The Man with One Red Shoe, Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters and later, When Harry Met Sally.

Fisher wed musician Paul Simon in 1983. It was an explosive marriage, and was cut short by swinging stages of depression, the actresses' drug use and an array of personal insecurities. The relationship continued, though, on-and-off for several years after the pair divorced in 1984.

The star's substance abuse problem was well-known, starting at only age 13 when she first started smoking marijuana. She said she later dabbled in drugs like cocaine and LSD.

Fisher's addiction was largely profiled in her 1987 best-selling, semi-autobiographical novel, Postcards from the Edge, which was later turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep.

Fisher is survived by her mother, daughter Billi Lourd, brother Todd Fisher (in the picture); and half-sisters, actresses Joely Fisher and Tricia Leigh Fisher.

In 1985, Fisher was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and subsequently became an outspoken advocate for mental health awareness.

Of returning to the role that launched her career, Princess Leia, for The Force Awakens, Fisher said in 2015, 'I knew that something enormous was likely going to impact my life from this film and that there was absolutely no way of understanding what that was or was likely to be.'

Billi Catherine Lourd, Fisher's only child, was born in July 1992. 

Star Wars: The Force Awakens brought Fisher back into the spotlight and earned her a nomination for the 2016 Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress.

Fisher recently opened up about her on-set affair with Star Wars co-star Harrison Ford in The Princess Diarist.

'It was so intense...I had forgotten that I'd written them, and I've never written diaries sort of like that. I write when I'm upset... It was about two or three months of upset,' she said.

Fisher added, 'It was sad because I was so insecure, and it’s very raw and obviously I didn't expect anyone -- including myself, I suppose later on -- to read it.'

Fisher had famously written her own obituary in her 2008 memoir Wishful Drinking, in which she recalled an incident where Star Wars creator George Lucas told her she could not wear a bra under the white dress she wore as Princess Leia.

When she asked him why, he replied, 'Because there’s no underwear in space.'

Lucas' explanation was that since one is weightless in space, the body expands but the bra doesn't. So one gets strangled by their own bra.

Fisher then wrote, 'Now I think that this would make for a fantastic obit -- so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by own bra.'