Carrie Fisher, the actress and writer best known for her iconic role as “Star Wars” Princess Leia, died days after suffering a heart attack while onboard a flight from London to Los Angeles. She was 60.

Fisher is the daughter of Hollywood legend Debbie Reynolds and the late singer Eddie Fisher. Fisher is also survived by her 24-year-old daughter Billie Lourd; her brother Todd Fisher; and two half-sisters. A brief marriage to singer Paul Simon ended in divorce in 1984.

According to USA Today, Fisher suffered a medical emergency on a United Airlines flight before landing at LAX last Friday. Efforts were made to revive her, according to a series of tweets from other passengers. She was taken to a hospital in L.A., where she died Tuesday.

Family spokesman Simon Halls released a statement to PEOPLE on behalf of Fisher’s daughter, Billie Lourd: “It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8:55 this morning,” reads the statement. “She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly,” says Lourd. “Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers.”

Her “Star Wars” co-star, actor Harrison Ford, issued a statement saying: “Carrie was one-of-a-kind…brilliant, original … Funny and emotionally fearless. She lived her life, bravely… My thoughts are with her daughter Billie, her Mother Debbie, her brother Todd, and her many friends. We will all miss her.”

The actress and author had been on tour to promote her latest memoir, “The Princess Diarist,” based on the diaries she kept as a 19-year-old shooting what is arguably the biggest movie of all time, 1977’s “Star Wars,” playing Rebel Alliance leader Princess Leia Organa, she of the famous double-bun hairstyle.

Her books, whether novels or memoirs, were funny, sharp and revealing. Among other things, her latest revealed her brief affair with co-star Harrison Ford, who was 14 years older and married with kids when they made “Star Wars.”

In a 2011 interview with the Sun-Times to promote her one-woman show Fisher related her love of writing: “I think of myself as a writer as much as a performer,” said Fisher , who penned the bestselling, quasi-autobiographical ‘Postcards from the Edge’ in 1987 (as well as the screenplay for its film version), and who worked for some years as a well-regarded Hollywood “script doctor. … By the time I was 13, maybe even younger, I would write to calm myself down. I had an overflowing of words. And I realized that if I put things down on paper I could get out from the emotions and organize myself.”

Fisher was most recently in Chicago in August where she was part of a panel discussion at Wizard World Comic Con Chicago at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont.

The actress was back onscreen playing Princess Leia in “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” in 2015 and “Star Wars: Episode VIII,” now in post-production. She, Ford and others in the original cast again found themselves walking red carpets, taking bows and taking Star Wars questions.

Fisher, as always, was accompanied by her little French bulldog Gary, the pooch who helped her cope with lifelong anxieties — later diagnosed as bipolar disorder — that helped lead to her problems with substance abuse.

Carrie Frances Fisher grew up marinated in Old Hollywood, loving and loathing it, embracing and rejecting it, always coming back to it as it evolved into New Hollywood. She was the daughter of crooner Eddie Fisher and Singin’ in the Rain star Debbie Reynolds, born in 1956 in Beverly Hills. Less than three years later, Eddie ran off to marry Elizabeth Taylor. It was a blow her mother eventually recovered from but Carrie not so much.

As a teen, she had a small role in Warren Beatty’s 1975 comedy “Shampoo,” but “Star Wars” changed everything for her, blasting her into a star galaxy far, far away from what even her parents had known. Fisher had a small but memorable gun-toting role in the 1980 comedy “The Blues Brothers” (filmed in Chicago) — Fisher was at one time engaged to star Dan Aykroyd — and also appeared in Hannah and Her Sisters (1986), “When Harry Met Sally …” (1989) and “Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery” (1997). Most recently, Fisher had a guest spot as an American mom on the British TV series “Catastrophe,” streaming on Amazon.

In 1987, she published her first novel, “Postcards From the Edge,” a semi-autobiographical satire of her real-life struggles with drug addiction in the late 1970s and her relationship with her mother. It was a best seller and later was made into a movie starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine.

Never shy about speaking her mind, she was open and often brutally honest in interviews and her books, discussing her love/hate dynamic with fans, her place as a geek goddess and that slave bikini she had to wear in 1983’s Return of the Jedi.

Throughout her up-and-down movie career, she remained a product of Hollywood who could step back and explain its history and rituals to the outsiders, always ready with a caustic comment or pointed joke. Hollywood could be exasperating and brutal, but it was still hers.

She felt somewhat the same about Leia. As she told USA TODAY last year, “I carry her around and I know her better than anybody else and we wear the same clothes a lot of times.”

I thought I had got what I wanted under the tree. I didn't. In spite of so many thoughts and prayers from so many. I am very, very sad. — Anthony Daniels (@ADaniels3PO) December 27, 2016

I'm deeply saddened at the news of Carrie's passing. She was a dear friend, whom I greatly respected and admired. The force is dark today! — Billy Dee Williams (@realbdw) December 27, 2016

Carrie Fisher. Cannot believe that you're 'gone'. Funny funny and then some. XXX pic.twitter.com/DV6GQC1lcx — Richard E. Grant (@RichardEGrant) December 27, 2016

We just lost a great ally for mental health and addiction. Be strong, be as strong as she'd want you to be. Rest in paradise @carrieffisher pic.twitter.com/vxDJkVag06 — Margaret Cho (@margaretcho) December 27, 2016

Carrie Fisher "Ugh,will everybody stop all of this?"

Us "no, let us gush, you just have to take it" — Kathy Griffin (@kathygriffin) December 27, 2016

Carrie Fisher was smart, funny, talented, surprising, and always a hell of a fun time to be around. Family Guy will miss her immensely. — Seth MacFarlane (@SethMacFarlane) December 27, 2016