Star Wars icon Carrie Fisher is dead at age 60. The actress and writer suffered a massive heart attack while on a flight from London to LAX, and went into cardiac arrest. Days later, she was declared dead.

Fisher's death was confirmed in a statement from her daughter's publicist Simon Halls, "It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning."

Fisher is best known for her role as Princess Leia Organa/Skywalker in George Lucas's original Star Wars trilogy - a role she had recently reprised for the smash hit sequel Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the upcoming Star Wars: Episode VIII in 2017.

Fisher was born in Beverly Hills, California, to a singer father and actress mother, making show business a natural progression for her. She made her movie debut in the Warren Beatty/Goldie Hawn 1975 comedy, Shampoo, before breaking into stardom with Star Wars in 1977 as Princess Leia - a role that would carry her through the '80s as the Star Wars trilogy became a worldwide phenomenon. Her status as a pop-culture icon would live on for the rest of her life and career, as she popped up for cameos in many famous projects (Austin Powers, Scream 3, 30 Rock, Family Guy), often mocking her own Star Wars persona.

She was also a frank and fearless author who would use her own personal struggles with things like drugs and bi-polar disorder as means of creating discourse and helping others. If that wasn't enough, she was also a playwright and performer, as well as a script writer/doctor, who even helped George Lucas with projects like Young Indiana Jones and the Star Wars Prequels. Her written work recently thrust her into limelight again, when her recent memoir, The Princess Diarist, surprising details of her life - such as a brief affair with co-star Harrison Ford

Our thoughts go out to Fisher's family and friends during their time of grieving - as well as the entire Star Wars fan and filmmaking community, to whom Carrie Fisher will always be royalty.

R.I.P. Carrie Frances Fisher; October 21, 1956 - December 27, 2016

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