Carrie
Fisher: perhaps one of manic-depression's best-known champions, the writer and
actress shows us how she wrangles her many moods.(Interview)
"HOW MANIC AM I?" ASKS Carrie
Fisher as she climbs around her hillside with a potted plant. Dressed in a sleek
black suit, she positions the shrub in an empty spot. "How's that?"
Later, she points to a horticulture article highlighting a garden in a rainbow
of color. "That's what I want." She confesses that lately, while she's
writing, she looks at her garden and gets up to readjust the trees and flowers
that are yet to be planted. The garden is her latest obsession.
Fisher is up-front about her manic
behavior. At first glance, she doesn't seem any crazier than the rest of us. But
when she pulls out her medications, you think again. All the little capsules and
tablets--prescription drugs to tame her bipolar disorder--are organized in a
weekly container. "Sunday, Monday, Wednesday," she mimics that famous
scene from The Godfather.
She takes nearly two dozen pills a day.
But recently, she blew off her daytime dosages and the result was a weeklong
escapade that ended in a tattoo parlor on the west side of Los Angeles. Her
manic side drives her to impulses, and as she notes, "Impulses become
edicts from the Vatican." Fortunately, for her sake, two friends
accompanied her. "They were concerned about me." And with good reason.
Nearly four years ago, the writer and
actress suffered what she calls a "psychotic break." At the time, she
was experiencing a deep depression--just getting out of bed to pick up
eight-year-old daughter Billie was a major feat. She was also improperly
medicated. She ended up in the hospital. There she was riveted to CNN, convinced
that she was both the serial killer Andrew Cunanan as well as the police who
were seeking him. "I was concerned that when he was caught, I would be
caught," she recalls.
Her brother, filmmaker Todd Fisher, feared
that he was going to lose her. "The doctors said she might not come
back." Awake for six days and six nights, she recalls hallucinating that a
beautiful golden light was coming out of her head. Yet the confusing thing about
her mania, says Todd, is her ability to remain articulate, clever and funny.
Todd says she launched into a Don Rickles-like diatribe, "ripping everyone
who came into her room."
Ex-partner Bryan Lourd, who has remained a
friend, was by her side. She said to him, "She's in the chair, she let me
out. I have to talk to you. I can't take care of Billie on my own."
At the hospital, she couldn't bear seeing
her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds, and asked that she not visit her. The two
remain close--actually, Reynolds bought the house next door.
FISHER ROLLS AROUND ON HER BED and does
somersaults. "I have to get out of here," she pleads. We hop into her
station wagon and head for the San Fernando Valley. At a garden nursery, we walk
up and down the footpaths looking for color. She picks up purple roses and
orange star clusters. While she talks about her garden, "I want everything
to be right," she is all too aware of her obsessive tendencies. Yet her
mania may well be an important part of her brilliance.
The daughter of Reynolds and 1950s crooner
Eddie Fisher, Carrie watched her father run off with actress Elizabeth Taylor.
"An unpleasant experience," as she puts it. Although she had an absent
father, she knows she resembles him in the most worrisome way. She notes that he
is an undiagnosed manic-depressive, "He bought 200 suits in Hong Kong, was
married six times and bankrupt four. It's crazy."
In her teens, what she wanted most was to
be near her mother, so Carrie made her Broadway debut in Irene at age 15.
Reynolds was the star of the show. Not long after, Fisher played the
scene-stealing nymphet in the movie Shampoo, then she was immortalized as
Princess Leia in that metal bikini. Her role in the classic Star Wars trilogy
shot her into superstardom.
This kind of celebrity, though, comes with
trappings. It was sex, drugs and late-night partying with Hollywood heavies like
John Belushi and Dan Akroyd. One night, she was so high Akroyd made her eat. She
choked on a Brussels sprout, so he performed the Heimlich maneuver. Then he
proposed to her.
Her longtime friend, director and actor
Griffin Dunne, says she made partying look fun. "Getting stoned was a part
of all our lives when we were younger. Her abuse only became apparent later to
me. I told her she was taking too many pills, but of course I was drunk at the
time, so I wasn't making a lot of sense."
Marijuana, acid, cocaine,
pharmaceuticals--she tried them all. Being on the manic side of bipolar
disorder, her drug use was a way to "dial down" the manic in her. In
some respects it was a form of self-medication. "Drugs made me feel more
normal," she says. "They contained me."
But her addictions were serious. At her
worst, she took 30 Percodan a day. "You don't even get high. It's like a
job, you punch in," she recalls. "I was lying to doctors and looking
through people's drawers for drugs." Such relentless abuse landed her in
rehab, at age 28, after she overdosed and wound up with a tube down her throat
to pump her stomach. In the end, her misadventures were recounted in her
autobiographical novel, Postcards From the Edge.
Writing, her secret ambition, helped her
stay focused. Postcards won her wide acclaim. Later still, she continued to gain
adulation when she wrote the book's screenplay. The film version, in fact,
starred friend Meryl Streep as the drug addicted heroine.
When she wrote Postcards, she says she
was, "uber-involved" in her 12-step recovery and subsequent addiction
support groups, but not all her issues were addressed. Her friend Richard
Dreyfuss told her that she suffered from more than just drug addiction.
"You don't walk down the street, it's a parade."
Dunne never thought of Fisher's problem as
a mental illness. That is, until he misplaced a rug she had lent him. She was
very understanding and told him not to worry. Yet, four years later, Fisher
brought up the rug. "She was furious about it, as if it just happened. Then
we talked a few days later and the rug was not that big a deal."
At first, Fisher may have ignored her
friends, but she eventually found a psychiatrist, proper medication and a
support group for manic-depressives. "When the group started talking about
their medications, it was such a relief," she remembers. She has since
become vocal in the struggle for mental health care. Earlier this year she
lobbied for more funding to treat mental illness at the Indiana statehouse.
Fisher has two moods, Roy the manic
extrovert and Pam the quiet introvert. "Roy decorated my house and Pam has
to live in it," she quips. If a home is any indication of one's state of
mind, then Fisher's mind is both playful and bizarre. A chandelier dangles from
a tree along the driveway and signs such as "beware of trains" hang
everywhere.
Her 1933 ranch style home, once owned by
Bette Davis, is littered with details that reveal her comic nature. One painting
in her bedroom depicts Queen Victoria tossing a dwarf. And inside a triptych in
the dining room you find an effigy of Princess Leia.
Throughout the house, there are irreverent
references to the Princess, but as Fisher puts it, "Leia follows me like a
vague smell." Her metal bikinied space babe is perhaps one of the most
downloaded images on the Web. You would think, though, that Fisher's
accomplishments as a writer might have eclipsed any memories of Leia. Since she
wrote Postcards, she has written two additional novels.
One, Surrender the Pink, was about her
relationship with ex-husband and pop icon Paul Simon, to whom she was married
for 11 months. For Fisher, his words had a certain soothing rhythm. "Except
when the words are organized against you, of course." She says she really
didn't fit the stereotype of wife, and as her friends put it, there were two
flowers and no gardener.
Fisher is perhaps one of the more
productive manic-depressives. She has script-doctored countless Hollywood films
including Milk Money and Sister Act. She is even hosting a talk show for Oxygen
Media. And in recent years, she has written screenplays; one for Showtime is
about a manic depressive writer who ends up in a mental hospital.
From working with her, Streep found how
very disciplined Fisher is. She is focused and stays on task. For Fisher,
working in spurts that may coordinate with her manic highs can be a good thing.
"She has wonderful, undeluded inspirations. She has told me that she is
sometimes reluctant to ameliorate a productive state by dulling it with
medication," says Streep.
Friend and actress Meg Ryan agrees that
Fisher has some tendencies to mess with herself, but she gets herself back in
line. "She manages this disease with enormous integrity. She's a great
example of how to do it, and she's very serious about it. She's serious about
being a good mom and a good friend."
Fisher takes her role as parent very
seriously. In fact, she will not take on any projects that might compromise her
time with Billie. Streep notes, "Some mothers tend to use a high-pitched
voice with their children. Carrie doesn't." She speaks to her daughter like
a friend.
That loyal family and friends surround her
is a testament to her character. After her hospitalization, she threw a
well-attended party. "I was worried about how everyone would react to
me." But as always, her humor saved her. She rented an ambulance and a
gurney that had a life-size cutout of Princess Leia hooked up to an IV.
"She plucks out that thing that would destroy the rest of us. Then she
makes fun of it," says Streep. "I'm sure it saves her."
In her own words
A chat with editor in chief Robert
Epstein, Ph.D.
Robert Epstein: Many of us know you as
Princess Leia, the invincible heroine of Star Wars. Are you invincible?
Carrie Fisher: No. I don't think that
anybody's invincible, but I can certainly outlast things. I don't want to be
thought of as a survivor because you have to continue getting involved in
difficult situations to show off that particular gift, and I'm not interested in
doing that anymore.
Are you saying you'd like to have some
peace in your life?
I don't want peace, I just don't want war.
At what point in your life did
depression or mania become evident?
I was diagnosed at 24, but I had been
seeing a therapist since I was about 15. I didn't like the diagnosis. I couldn't
believe the psychiatrist told me that. I just thought it was because he was lazy
and didn't want to treat me. I was on drugs, too, at the time, and I don't think
you can accurately diagnose bipolar disorder when someone is actively drug
addicted or alcoholic. Then I overdosed at 28, at which point I began to accept
the bipolar diagnosis. It was [Richard] Dreyfuss who came to the hospital and
said, "You're a drug addict, but I have to tell you that I've observed this
other thing in you: You're a manic-depressive." So maybe I was taking drugs
to keep the monster in the box.
What happened after the
hospitalization?
I spent a year in a 12-step program,
really committed, because I could not believe what had happened--that I might
have killed myself. During that year, I started having episodes that were very
unpleasant and very intense. Someone would hurt my feelings, and I would get
upset and stay upset for hours. I'd sit in my house sobbing, unable to stop,
inconsolable. Sometimes I'd get very frustrated, I broke a lot of phones. This
was embarrassing to me because I really didn't think of myself as temperamental
and spoiled. There was a lot of shame associated with some of the behaviors that
I had. I went to a doctor and told him I felt normal on acid, that I was a light
bulb in a world of moths. That is what the manic state is like. He put me on
lithium. I liked that for a while, but soon I missed my little pal, my up mood.
I didn't fully accept the bipolar diagnosis. I thought, well, everybody's moody
... maybe I'm just telling myself a story. Maybe there's no such thing. Maybe
it's an exaggeration. I went to Australia to do a film. I went off the lithium,
and if I was ever manic, it was then. It came back with a vengeance and it
wanted to go traveling and we (me and the mood and my brother) ended up in China
because it was near. I looked at a map and I thought, "It's only six inches
away. That's great."
So now you're in China, totally manic,
and you're off your medication.
Yes, and a lot of it was funny in the
beginning. I would just go on these rambles. For example, we went to the Great
Wall of China and they said, "The left side is where the Chinese people go
up, and the tourist side is on the right because it's easier ..." And I
thought, "They're lying to me," because I knew that at Disneyland, the
left side of the Matterhorn was faster than the right side. This is the kind of
logic I have when I'm manic.
When did you finally accept the fact
that you were suffering from bipolar disorder?
I didn't accept it fully until I had the
psychotic break four years ago, in 1997. There was a lot of pressure in my life.
I was still wrangling with my moods, and I was living in a house, which is a lot
of responsibility. I had a child, and for her sake I was trying to act as if I
hadn't been hurt by her father, who had left me for a man. I was hiding, and I
am not used to doing that. I just started to feel weirder and weirder, and I
think I was improperly medicated. I was intermittently on drugs at this time
too. I got unbelievably depressed. My daughter was going to camp, and I would
get up every day out of this bed, this swamp, and go pick her up. That was the
most complicated thing in the world. I don't know how I did it. It must have
been very unpleasant for her. I went to a doctor who gave me all these new
medications that sounded like they came from Venus --they had no vowels in
them---and something very bad happened. The medications collided, and I became
very, very ill. I collapsed, I stopped breathing, and I was taken to the
hospital where they sent me home and put me on a "medication
vacation." I didn't sleep for six days, and I was scared. My mind split
open, and some bad thing oozed out, and that's what I was left with. I thought
that if I fell asleep I would die. I wasn't connecting at all, but I kept
talking and talking and talking. At a certain point, I lost my mind. The
birthing was over, and I got to the other side of the looking glass. When I went
back to the hospital, I was hallucinating.
How long was the treatment?
I'm not sure how long I was in the
hospital, but I was an outpatient for five months. Afterward, my friend Penny
Marshall and I had our big annual party. All the tables had IV hookups on them
with colored water, and the cake was me in bed with Penny visiting. It was
performance art. It was beautiful.
How are you now?
I'm fine, but I'm bipolar. I'm on seven
medications, and I take medication three times a day. This constantly puts me in
touch with the illness I have. I'm never quite allowed to be free of that for a
day. It's like being a diabetic.
Do you feel at this point that the
problem is under control?
No. I feel that the medication that I'm on
can handle it, but I still have the impulse to ride the "white
lightning" again.
Do you have a message for people who
suffer with bipolar disorder?
Oh, yes. You can outlast anything. It's
complicated, it's a job, but it's doable. One of the greatest things that
happened for me was that psychotic episode. Having survived it, I now know the
difference between a problem and an inconvenience. Bipolar disorder can be a
great teacher. It's a challenge, but it can set you up to be able to do almost
anything else in your life.
You do seem like Princess Leia, after
all--conquering foes even darker than Darth Vader. Is there turmoil in your
future?
Most likely. I would like to keep that to
a minimum. But now I know how to put these things in perspective.
Carrie's postcards
1956: Born to Debbie Reynolds and Eddie
Fisher
1972: Broadway debut in Irene, starring
her mom
1975: Attended Central School of Speech
and Drama, London. Appeared in first film, Shampoo
1977: Through 1983: Appeared in the
classic Star Wars film trilogy as Princess Leia
1983: Married pop icon Paul Simon,
divorced after 11 months
1987: Wrote autobiographical novel,
Postcards From the Edge
1990: Wrote novel Surrender the Pink,
about her marriage to Simon and wrote screenplay for Postcords
1992: Gave birth to daughter, Billie
Catherine
1994: Wrote novel, Delusions of Grandma
2000: Cowrote These Old Broods, starring
Debble Reynolds
Since 1980s: Appeared in films--including
When Harry Met Sally as witty best friend
Since 1990s: Script-doctored films including Hook, Sister Act, Lethal Weapon 3, Outbreak, The Wedding Singer
COPYRIGHT 2001 Sussex Publishers, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Gale Group