NEW YORK — No one could make us laugh through the pain like Carrie Fisher.The daughter of Hollywood stars Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, and a survivor of early fame, drug addiction and bipolar disorder, she wrote with unsentimental wit and understanding about her private struggles and about an industry she was raised in but stood apart from.Fisher, known to the world as Princess Leia of "Star Wars," died Tuesday at 60, four days after falling ill aboard an airline flight. Media reports said the actress had suffered a heart attack."I do believe you're only as sick as your secrets. If that's true, I'm just really healthy," she said in a confessional 2009 interview with The Associated Press.The public fell in love with her twice: as Princess Leia and as the wry truth-teller of such books as "Postcards From the Edge," ''Wishful Drinking" and "The Princess Diarist," in which she revealed having an intense affair with "Star Wars" co-star Harrison Ford.Fisher told plenty of secrets about others — about her parents' breakup when she was 2, about being advised by Warren Beatty on wearing a bra in "Shampoo," and about arguing with then-husband Paul Simon about whether it was better to be a man or a woman.Asked by NPR recently why she wrote about her fling with Ford, who was 15 years older and married, she joked that she could hold back no longer because he had refused to die: "I kept calling and saying, 'When are you going to die because I want to tell the story?'"But she was toughest on herself and unafraid to turn trauma into humor.
'Star Wars' princess Carrie Fisher dead at 60
Reports: Popular star died from heart attack