Carrie Fisher's Crowning Moment

Joan Marcus, Boneau Bryan-Brown / AP Photo With an acclaimed Broadway show and a wit that won't stop, the geek-fantasy girl tells Kevin Sessums about her warped Hollywood upbringing, drug-fueled nights, and life in recovery.

Carrie Fisher is currently starring on Broadway in her one-woman show, Wishful Drinking, based on her bestselling book. In the show, Carrie Fisher as “Carrie Fisher” carries on about her marriages to musician Paul Simon and Hollywood macher Bryan Lourd of CAA, her parents Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, her resilient daughter Billie Catherine Lourd, her first brush with fame based on her portrayal of Princess Leia in Star Wars, and her battles with addiction and bipolar disorder. Her way with words has always been her lifeline and she infuses her narrative with laughter and the kind of keen insight—a knowing combination of cynicism and sentimentality—honed in the hills and psychiatrist offices of Hollywood.

“My father went up to Cary Grant and said, ‘So my daughter has a problem with acid, huh?’ So Cary Grant phoned me yet again to talk about acid after Princess Grace’s funeral.”

I met Fisher on the day before her 53rd birthday. She received me lying in bed in mid-afternoon as she finished up a bowl of oatmeal accompanied by a tumbler of Coke. By her side was a dog-eared underlined copy of Samuel Johnson’s The History of Rasselas, Prince of Abissinia, a novella that concerns that most nagging of human concerns: happiness. Johnson’s original title for the book was The Choice of Life. But because Carrie’s birthday was the next day, I thought not of Johnson’s 18th-century prose but of the poem she had written herself back in the 20th and only recently posted on her blog  and dedicated to all her readers who were going through their own versions of “thriving tinged with joy,” which is the way she best describes her own bouts of happiness. The poem goes like this: Your once upon a time is up/Prince Charming’s been abducted/Tinkerbell’s on angel dust/The Matterhorn’s erupted/Your once upon a time is up/Tammy’s talking dirty/Dumbo has a Ph.D./Leia’s WAAAAAAAAAAAY past thirty ..”

So this is your last day to be 52. Are you glad to leave it behind?

What’s the difference at this point? You just knew when you were younger that 50 was old. But it could be worse. I could be dead.

You had a brother, Todd, to help you survive your own childhoods together. Do you wish you had had another child yourself?

I do kind of. I do. That’s true. I do. I even went to a doctor at one point to see about having another child and he said to me, “But why would you want to have another child and fill it up with affective disorder?” That’s another term for bipolarity. That was a horrible thought because it is genetic. Thank God my daughter is OK so I didn’t want to take that risk.

Who else has it in your family?

My father.

I know you’ve survived by being able to separate yourself from your self and seeing your life as narrative. So how would you describe the narrative arc that takes one from 1953’s Coke Time with Eddie Fisher on NBC to 2009’s Wishful Drinking starring Carrie Fisher on Broadway?

You know, I really was not ever around my father that much when I was growing up. Though I did do drugs with him. Of course, that’s now all different. I kind of take care of him now. But I remember once going to see him when I was about 14 and he said, “Look what I got in Hong Kong!” He took me into his closet and showed me 180 silk suits in different colors. And I remember thinking, “That’s not OK. That’s really weird.” He was always really “up” and always going bankrupt and fucking everybody and loaded—those are all signs of bipolar disorder. He was on speed for 13 years. I just wasn’t around him that much. But when I was around him, he was a lot of fun and I wanted more of it. He’s just not the father type. He’s a child himself. He’s not a mean man. He didn’t go, “How can I screw up my kids by not seeing them?” It just was not in his nature.