LOS ANGELES – Late Star Wars actress Carrie Fisher was honoured with a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame on Thursday, in a ceremony overshadowed by a bitter feud among her family members.
Fisher, who played Princess Leia in the highest-grossing sci-fi film franchise of all time, died of a heart attack at age 60 in 2016. She is survived by her daughter, actress Billie Lourd, 30.
Lourd – in a dress adorned with her mother’s most famous character – oversaw Fisher’s posthumous honours, which took place on May the Fourth, an unofficial Star Wars holiday.
But conspicuous by their absence at the Los Angeles event were Fisher’s brother Todd Fisher, and half-sisters Joely and Tricia Leigh, who this week slammed Lourd for failing to invite them.
Todd, 65, told celebrity news website TMZ that “being omitted from this special day is truly hurtful”, while Joely and Tricia wrote on Instagram that their omission was “deeply shocking”.
Lourd hit back by accusing the siblings of cashing in on her mother’s death “by doing multiple interviews and selling individual books for a lot of money”.
“The truth of my mum’s very complicated relationship with her family is known only by me and those who were actually close to her,” she wrote in American entertainment magazine The Hollywood Reporter.
“We have no relationship,” said Lourd, confirming she had not invited the trio.
A campaign to obtain a star for Fisher had been running for years, with fans complaining that her male co-stars Mark Hamill and Harrison Ford have long had their own honours.
Hamill, who played Fisher’s twin brother Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars films, paid tribute to “my beloved space twin” at Thursday’s ceremony, where Star Wars characters R2-D2, C3PO and a Stormtrooper were in attendance.
“She was our princess,” he said.
May the Fourth – the date chosen for Fisher’s ceremony – is celebrated each year by Star Wars fans, in a twist on the films’ oft-repeated mantra “May the Force be with you”.
Fisher, whose first screen role came as a teenager in late director Hal Ashby’s satire Shampoo (1975), played Leia in six movies, beginning with Star Wars (1977). She appeared posthumously in Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker (2019).
Fisher joins more than 2,000 of the biggest names of film, television and music who have stars embedded in the sidewalks of Hollywood Boulevard and its surrounding streets.
These include her parents – singer Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds, who died a day after her – as well as American actress Connie Stevens, the former wife of Eddie Fisher and the mother of Joely and Tricia. AFP
