While Carrie Fisher’s acting career was filled with accolades and achievements, her personal life was altogether more complicated. Beset with what she referred to as “pratfalls and accidents”, the Star Wars heroine who played Princess Leia, took it upon herself to become an agony aunt, responding to readers questions in her Advice from the Dark Side column.
But it was not simply readers which Fisher, who died at the age of 60 on Tuesday, dedicated her time to helping. Somewhat unexpectedly, Fisher says she served as a confidante and "therapist" to James Blunt.
The duo struck up an unlikely friendship when the singer-songwriter went to stay in Los Angeles. After Blunt decided to lodge with her, she fast became a source of support for him and one of his first musical champions.
It was in London that the friendship first emerged. Fisher was visiting London and their paths crossed after they were introduced by Blunt's then girlfriend Dixie Chassay, whose family are long-time friends of the hollywood icon.
After it became clear he was en route to LA to record for a label in the states, she kindly offered up her Beverly Hills abode for him to stay in. She even quipped that her home was a “guest house for wandering Brits”.
While the pair kept their distance for a couple of months, they eventually built up a strong friendship. In this time, he even recorded in her bathroom where she keeps a piano.
Discussing their improbable friendship In an interview with The Independent on Sunday back in 2006, she said: “He'd never been to therapy and I've had enough for both of us, so we started talking quite deeply about his time in the army and the kind of impact that had had. And so on. So I was kind of his shrink/landlady”.
“We became very, very good friends by the end,” Fisher, who was a prominent champion for mental health awareness, continued. “He is a good person and he was very good to me when I had a friend pass away. He's a really good soul. This was someone for whom I became a therapist, bear in mind. There was a lot of transference. I still talk to him all the time.”
Blunt was equally effusive about their friendship. ”Carrie fed me soup, showed me old movies and put a cardboard figure of her in Star Wars outside my room to protect me,” he said at the time.
On top of this, Fisher became one of Blunt’s key musical champions, playing his songs to all of her guests and even helping him name his album Back to Bedlam. He has even previously referred to Fisher as his “American mother”.
“I played his music to all my friends that came over, whatever celebrity crowd I could muster at my bungalow," Fisher said. "I thought he was very good. I actually helped name his album. He didn't know what Bedlam was before I told him.”
Fisher went so far as to even pen a biography for the singer's website under the pseudonym “The Landlady”, saying that his “family have served in one kind of army or another since 995AD.“
Blunt was evidently moved by Fisher’s death, saying that he would miss her.
"Sweet dreams, darling @carrieffisher. I'm gonna miss you. So much. x" he wrote on Twitter.
To the dismay and grief of her devoted fans, Fisher suffered a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles last week and died on Tuesday at the age of 60.
