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Carrie Fisher: A life in pictures

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image captionCarrie Fisher was born into showbusiness. Her father, Eddie Fisher, was a singer and her mother, Debbie Reynolds, a Hollywood film star.
image sourceAP
image captionShe decided early on to follow her parents into the entertainment industry, making her first stage appearance at the age of 15 in a Broadway show alongside her mother.
image sourceAP/20th Century Fox
image captionFisher made her big screen debut in the 1975 film Shampoo but it was in Star Wars two years later that she achieved fame as Princess Leia alongside Harrison Ford, left, and Mark Hamill.
image sourceAP
image captionIn her recent memoir she revealed for the first time that as a 19-year-old actress, she had an affair with co-star Harrison Ford, who was then married. The affair lasted three months.
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image captionFisher married the singer Paul Simon in 1983 after a five-year relationship, but they divorced just a year later.
image sourceReuters
image captionShe also had a three-year relationship with talent agent Bryan Lourd which resulted in the birth of her daughter, Billie Lourd.
image sourceAP
image captionThe actress had a long history of health problems. She underwent treatment for cocaine addiction in the mid-1980s and also suffered from bipolar disorder, experiences she used in her semi-autobiographical novels.
image sourceAP
image captionLater in life, she earned a reputation revising and polishing screenplays by other writers.