Carrie Fisher Needs No Intro

Carrie Fisher needs no introduction, but she might prefer one. The daughter of singing star Eddie Fisher and Oscar-nominated actress Debbie Reynolds, Fisher was an international star in her own right by her 21st birthday, thanks to her role as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy. Things didn’t go so smoothly after that: Typecasting and Fisher’s prodigious drug use combined to limit her options, which included a part in the calamitous Wizard Of Oz satire Under The Rainbow. But she found a second life as a writer, first as an uncredited script doctor, then as a bestselling novelist whose books, including Postcards From the Edge, Surrender The Pink, and Delusions Of Grandma, bear a strong resemblance to her own life. In Wishful Drinking, Fisher drops the protection of fiction and lays her life bare, telling her story to a live audience; the long-running show migrated to the printed page, then was captured in a performance film that comes out on DVD this week. Fisher recently talked to The A.V. Club about dating Dan Aykroyd, writing her own lines, and the benefits of shock therapy.