'How mum rumbled dad in bed with TWO Swedish blondes!' Carrie Fisher's sister lifts the lid on the Star Wars actress's childhood mired by drugs

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Legions of Star Wars fans will flock to next week’s much anticipated release of The Last Jedi, the latest film in the best-selling franchise and, sadly, the final performance of Carrie Fisher.

For a generation that has grown up with the films, the latest instalment represents an emotional farewell to the actress, who died unexpectedly last Christmas aged just 60 and who for millions will always be feisty Princess Leia.

As the daughter of Singin’ In The Rain star Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher, the heart-throb 1950s singer, Carrie was a Hollywood princess in real life, too – although in common with many members of showbusiness ‘royalty’, her own upbringing was no fairy tale. 

Carrie’s sister Joely has revealed that, for all their wealth and adulation, the Fishers’ lives were overshadowed by greed and addiction. Above, the sisters together in 2007 

Indeed, in the past few days, Carrie’s sister Joely has released a devastating memoir revealing that, for all their wealth and adulation, the Fishers’ lives were overshadowed by greed, addiction and the dark legacy of their philandering, drug-addicted father Eddie.

Today, in an explosive interview, Joely, 50, recalls how Eddie wrecked not one, but two families. She explains how her own dreams of a happy, stable life were shattered when her mother burst in on her father in bed with two young Swedish models and admits that her entire life has been a battle with addiction.

‘The apple never falls far from the tree,’ she explains today. ‘Drugs are in our DNA. It’s genetic – we are predisposed to it, to quiet voices, to demons.

‘My first experience with drugs was when I was a toddler. I had a baby’s-eye view of my own father prepping a needle and injecting drugs into his veins.

‘I have a letter to back it up, one Eddie wrote to me when I was a child out of severe guilt and remorse – and when he was higher than a kite.

‘I was digging through a box and found a baby book and an eight-page letter he wrote on the day I was born, asking my forgiveness.’

Joely’s actress-singer mother Connie Stevens had been a star in her own right when, in 1967, she became the third wife of Eddie 

It is a story rooted in the darker side of Hollywood. Yet for Joely, herself an actress, there is redemption, too – in the love and affection she would eventually find in Carrie, her sister from a ‘rival’ half of the family, to whom she today pays moving tribute.

Joely’s actress-singer mother Connie Stevens had been a star in her own right when, in 1967, she became the third wife of Eddie. That year Connie gave birth to Joely, half-sister to 11-year-old Carrie. Whatever promises he had made to his new bride, however, it was not long before Eddie fell back into the limitless drink, drugs and adultery that had already destroyed two marriages.

Joely was just two and her sister Tricia a few months old when her mother caught Eddie in flagrante, in what has become the defining moment of her childhood.

The Star Wars actress was found to have had narcotics in her system when she died of a heart attack on a plane last December

‘Connie came home and found Eddie in the marital bed with two blonde Swedish girls,’ she says. ‘It must have been the biggest punch to the stomach a woman can have.

‘There were two of them. What that must have meant to her, the feeling that she wasn’t good enough for him. It was tough.

‘My mother had a superstar husband and she had two children under the age of three. That’s a terrible moment for any woman. My father was insatiable in every way and he couldn’t be tamed.

‘Leaving the house that day is vivid for me. As my Mum tells it, she left – in her sequined gown – with a baby on each hip and a diaper bag slung over her shoulder.

‘My mother didn’t share her memory of this with me for many years, until I was an adult. But I still have a strong recollection that she took us to a motel down the road, which is still there. Every time we go past I think about when my mother left my father.

‘That motel was where my life started. She was then raising two children on her own in a fickle industry.’ If there was one consolation for Connie, it was that the spurned wives and mothers found deep friendship with each other, many years before their daughters followed suit. Connie – who moved to Malibu with her daughters shortly after the split – and Debbie Reynolds became neighbours on the beachfront and quickly forged a bond.

‘They decided that their children were more important to them than any ex-husband,’ Joely says.

‘They had both been unceremoniously – or ceremoniously – dumped by one of the most infamous men in the world at the time. But they put the past behind them. We lived next door to Debbie on the beach. They were friends until the very end.’

By 1977, Carrie was riding high on the success of the first Star Wars movie, which was eagerly watched by ten-year-old Joely. At that time, the two had not yet met.

‘When I went to see Star Wars, I knew Carrie was my sister,’ she recalls. ‘I sat there, that first moment when they are going to rescue the princess and she was sitting in that pose, with that white gown and the iconic hairdo.

‘She had those chocolate brown eyes and a sparkle about her. I was like “wow.” ’

By 1977, Carrie was riding high on the success of the first Star Wars movie, which was eagerly watched by ten-year-old Joely. At that time, the two had not yet met

However, it would be nearly ten years later, in the late 1980s, that their friendship truly began, once Joely was old enough to be invited to Carrie’s Hollywood home for industry events and parties.

Their shared, dysfunctional childhood would eventually bind the sisters’ lives together. Joely’s upbringing had been a whirlwind of all-night parties with her mother, where she saw some of the world’s most famous stars taking drugs and drunkenly cavorting.

Who else but Carrie could understand what such a childhood had been like?

Joely recalls staying on her father’s couch for a few days, and jokily flashing her backside after coming out of the shower.

‘ “Oh,” he said, “do that again.” He always brought it up after that, and he’d say, “Show me your t**s.” Not just to me but to my sister Tricia and to Carrie. And, sadly, Carrie’s daughter Billie. He often spoke inappropriately to his daughters.

‘He never, ever would have touched us. But he didn’t know how to communicate with a woman, other than sexually, and his charms had got him so far in all other areas of his life, it was the only device he had.’

Referring to the letter Eddie had written to her when she was a baby, asking for her forgiveness, she says: ‘I was supposed to be the one to “clean things up”. What a huge responsibility for a child that she has to make the world a better place for her daddy. It’s a very “addict” move.

‘He was trying to make his behaviour OK, to justify it, to explain it away, but he couldn’t. Later in my life, I did accept his apology.’

Joely says she eventually forged a relationship with their father, and was heartbroken that she didn’t get to see him on his death bed before he died in 2010. By then, her own problems were mounting, and culminated in a ‘two-day bender’ that, she says, was pushing her down the path to self-destruction through drugs such as cocaine. It was Princess Leia who came to the rescue.

‘It was in 2004,’ Joely recalls. ‘I flew to New York for the weekend for a friend’s birthday. It was a much-needed girl getaway. With two best friends in tow, we took more than a bite of the Big Apple. Or I did.

‘Not for the first time, I called Carrie from New York at three or four in the morning because I knew I could. I said, “Carrie, I think I’m in trouble.”

‘She talked me down from the ledge. I was on a slippery slope. If I’d carried on it would have spiralled into me dying. She was the only one I could talk to who wouldn’t judge me.

‘Carrie knew the experience that I was having; it was one junkie to another. When I got back to LA we went to a meeting and that was the last time I ever took drugs. My big sister saved my life. Sadly, she didn’t save her own.’

The Star Wars actress was found to have had narcotics in her system when she died of a heart attack on a plane last December.

Joely treasures the last time she saw her in good health. ‘It was at her 60th,’ she says. ‘Our birthdays are both in October, but her birthday was historically the biggest and most notorious party in Hollywood. The guest list was huge and everybody wanted to be on it; A-list stars and movie directors. Everybody let their hair down.

‘It was a joyous occasion. She was in celebration mode, enjoying her success in life and she looked great. All of her favourite people were there, and she was off to work in London and Italy.

‘Guests were treated to dancing, fried chicken, black-eyed peas and mac’n’cheese. What Carrie would say was real soul food.

‘I was so glad to get to see her and Debbie, whom I sat with, wrapped in a beautiful cashmere blanket holding court.

‘As we left at the end of the evening with the usual pleasantries, I couldn’t have imagined never getting to see her again. Yet it really was the last time I saw her.’

She adds: ‘Last December she was in London, and we texted at length, as we did from time to time. And on this occasion we went deep.

‘We spoke about career, ageing, family. We talked about our moms. We covered a little politics.

‘We promised to see each other for Christmas, a promise I would uphold – just not in the way I’d imagined.’

Joely was about to take the stage in the play Sleeping Beauty And Her Winter Knight in Laguna Beach when the news of her sister’s death came through.

She raced to the UCLA Hospital to see Carrie, along with her sister Tricia, Debbie and Carrie’s daughter Billie.

‘We sang, we prayed, we fielded texts, emails, calls, messages of love, everyone hoping and assuming that Carrie would be coming back to us any day now. That she’d open her eyes, and her smart mouth,’ she says.

‘Carrie was being kept alive by dozens of machines. I felt her spirit hovering somewhere over her room and her body. It took everything in my being to leave that night. She died the next day.’

As if one tragedy wasn’t enough, a grief-stricken Debbie died the following day after a stroke.

‘It was shocking, but it made complete sense.’ Joely says. ‘They were best friends, Debbie lives for her daughter and she died because she couldn’t be without her.

‘I miss my sister so much. She was the smartest, most deliciously, wickedly funny person I had ever met and knew.

‘I feel blessed to have been able to have spent my life with her.’

lGrowing Up Fisher: Musings, Memories, And Misadventures, by Joely Fisher, is published by William Morrow and is available from Amazon.co.uk priced £16.89.