Carrie Fisher’s brutal honesty

last updated 8 January 2015

Carrie Fisher doesn’t have many secrets, says Amy Larocca in New York. In her 53 years, the actress and screenwriter has faced more than the usual quota of demons—substance abuse, bipolar disorder, and a series of failed relationships, including a marriage in which her husband left her for a man. She chooses to laugh at all of it, like the time she woke up to find a male friend dead in her bed: “Have you ever seen a dead body? They’re really bad conversationalists.” Or her years of alcohol and drug use: “I don’t have a problem with drugs so much as I have a problem with sobriety.” Or her stint in a mental ward: “I was in the hospital with a woman who called her shrink and said, ‘I’m going to commit suicide,’ and he said, ‘You said you would call me first,’ and she said, ‘I did,’ and then she shot herself.” Fisher has turned her mordant humor into a one-woman show on Broadway, but her main motivation for going public, she says, is therapeutic, not commercial. “I’m transparent about all this stuff because it’s out there anyway, and I want my version. The fact that I can make somebody laugh at this stuff—it can be very cathartic. If you claim something, you can own it. But if you have it as a shameful secret, you’re f---ed; you’re sitting in a room populated by elephants. Also, I do believe you’re only as sick as your secrets. If that’s true, I’m just really healthy.”