4. SHE WAS MARRIED TO PAUL SIMON

Carrie Fisher was married to Simon and Garfunkel’s (and perennial SNL favorite) Paul Simon, with the state of their relationship dictated by their respective levels of depression (drug-fueled or otherwise). Despite being engaged to Ghostbusters’ Dan Aykroyd  in 1980, she would end up marrying Simon in 1983. The pair would divorce in 1984, yet go on to date each other on and off for the next ten years. Simon’s 1983 song, ‘Heart and Bones’ (from the album of the same name) is about her.

3. SHE WAS A SUCCESSFUL SCRIPT DOCTOR AND A BESTSELLING AUTHOR

Fisher would put her wit to fine use in the industry she all but grew up in, becoming a highly-sought after script doctor studios would bring in to do last-minute rewrites of existing scripts. Indeed, blockbusters such as Lethal Weapon 3 (1992), Sister Act (1992), and The Wedding Singer (1998) all bore her invisible fingerprints, as she was rarely credited for her work. As thanks for her help in polishing Tinkerbell’s dialogue in 1991’s Hook, she has a cameo in the film alongside director Steven Spielberg’s best friend, George Lucas.

Off-screen, her brutally-honest semi-autobiographical novels made regular appearances on the New York Times Bestseller list, including Postcards from the Edge (which was made into a film starring Meryl Streep), The Best Awful There Is, and Wishful Drinking. Her latest book, the recently-released The Princess Diarist, compiles diary entries she wrote during her time on the Star Wars set, including the revelation that she had an affair with co-star Harrison Ford.

2. SHE DIDN’T TAKE SHIT (ON OR OFF THE SCREEN)

Whether by design or circumstance, George Lucas and Carrie Fisher’s work in shaping the latter’s signature character went a long way towards legitimizing the presence of strong female characters in cinema (note: while it’s a myth that Leia is the only character in the saga never to miss a shot, she comes pretty darn close). While characters such as Alien’s Ellen Ripley would still have existed even without Star Wars, it’s interesting to consider just how different their characterizations (Ripley was originally written as a man) might have been without Leia proving that audiences would accept a female hero.

At any rate, Fisher was no slouch off the screen, and was justifiably proud of her character–When faced with questions on what to tell kids about her (in)famously skimpy slave outfit from Return of the Jedi, she had this to say: “Tell them that a giant slug captured me and forced me to wear that stupid outfit, and then I killed him because I didn’t like it. And then I took it off. Backstage.”

1. SHE ALREADY WROTE HER OBITUARY

Well known for her razor-sharp wit, salacious sense of humor, and hilariously blunt way of expressing herself (check out @carriefisher on Twitter, and enjoy!), it should come as no surprise that Fisher already had her obituary planned out, as related in this excerpt from her 2008 memoir, Wishful Drinking, based on discussions with Lucas on whether or not Leia would have underwear on under her white senatorial dress:

“George [Lucas] comes up to me the first day of filming, and he takes one look at the dress and says, ‘You can’t wear a bra under that dress…because there is no underwear in space.’”

“I promise you this is true, and he says it with such conviction too! Like he had been to space and looked around and he didn’t see any bras or panties or briefs anywhere.”

She continued, “What happens is you go to space and you become weightless. So far so good, right? But then your body expands??? But your bra doesn’t—so you get strangled by your own bra. Now I think that this would make for a fantastic obit—so I tell my younger friends that no matter how I go, I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra.”

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