Inspiring an (Intergalactic) Revolution

From the golden age of technicolour musicals to millennial CGI, this family has been at the forefront for decades, now passing the torch to the youngest generation in Carrie Fisher’s daughter Billie Lourd. Reynolds and Fisher have had iconic status as leading ladies beginning with Reynold’s first foray in the 1950s but few public figures have taken on the symbolism that Fisher has in recent years, and for good reason.

Debbie Reynolds danced her way into the public consciousness in 1952 when her star shot to prominence with Singin’ In The Rain. While she may not have continued to scale the same heights in popularity as this seminal film, she worked tirelessly, consistently and diligently throughout the decades. She proved herself worthy of the ever desired EGOT with nominations throughout her career for Emmys, Golden Globes, Oscars and Tonys for her Broadway performances. Even in her 80s she continued performing, finally winning the Screen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award in 2014 and the Jean Herscholt Humanitarian Award from the Academy in 2015.

She directed her philanthropic attention on issues of youth and young people and was President of the Thalians (a children’s mental health charity) for 56 years before retiring in 2014. Few can lay claim to a career spanning 5 decades, never mind such devoted volunteer charitable work.

Reynolds married Eddie Fisher, her first husband of three, in 1952 – famously ending after the birth of Carrie’s brother Todd with a headline grabbing affair between Fisher and the equally attention-grabbing Elizabeth Taylor – the Enquirer scandal of that decade. In true feminist fashion, however, Reynolds and Taylor famously managed to bury the hachet on a cruise liner in the late 60s and enjoyed a close friendship in the latter years of Taylor’s life. A baller feminist move, which comes as no surprise.

And thus, Carrie Fisher was borne into a predestined life of celluloid royalty – with all the joy, pain, addiction, attention and elevation that the path would bring. She had a famously complex relationship with her fame, with Hollywood and with her most iconic character but the generations she inspired cannot be denied. As Princess Leia and latterly as General Organa she has become the face of the feminist revolution whether she liked it or not. She is a shining beacon of strength, resistance and inspiration for multiple generations of women and legions of men. Something she took great humour from and great pride in. 

She made her life literally an open book with a variety of autobiographies with eye watering accounts of her life and misadventures. She toured with her one woman show and never shied from opening the pages of her life for public consumption. Perhaps therapy, perhaps a genetic need for attention – either way she lived her life in such an open and vulnerable manner that she inspired generations of people living with issues of mental health, addiction, family dysfunction and anxiety. She may well be best known for her role as the bun styled, gun toting Leia but her dark razor sharp humour and vibrant strength will be her legacy.

Her relationship with her famous parents was notoriously fraught but her closeness to her mother remained. She began her life in the shadow of celebrity and sought to escape or emulate in equal measure:

“When I was born, my mother was given an anaesthetic because they didn’t have epidurals in those days. Consequently, she was unconscious.

Now, my mother is a beautiful woman—she’s beautiful today in her 70s, so at 24 she looked like a Christmas morning. All the doctors [in the delivery room] were buzzing round her pretty head, saying: ‘Oh, look at Debbie Reynolds asleep—how pretty.’

And my father, upon seeing me start to arrive, fainted. So all the nurses ran over saying: ‘Oh look, there’s Eddie Fisher, the crooner, on the ground. Let’s go look at him.’

So when I arrived I was virtually unattended. And I have been trying to make up for that fact ever since.”

She may be the face of teenage fantasy in Star Wars but IRL, she is now the face that inspires the Revolution. Google any image of the Women’s Marches since 2015 and it’s her face on the placards. Teenage girls buy t-shirts with her strident zingers emblazoned across them. Topping best seller lists for her memoirs and sought after on all streaming services, Fisher has vocalised the struggles faced by millions in her own bid to survive them. She brought humour and pathos to mental health and to the fight to find your place.

She might be Leia for anyone born since 1975, but for women in the new millenium, she is the Resistance. A legacy borne of both her mother’s and her own hard work.