Princess Carrie, of the darkly comic

There is nothing untoward in remembering Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia in her fairytale white princess’ cloak (more princess’ handmaiden’s, actually), Danish pastries hair, and I’mnot-scared-of-Wookies chutzpah in the Star Wars movies. As far as iconic figures in cinema, the role chose her well and she it.

But Fisher, who died on Tuesday — in a year that would make the Galactic Empire’s planet-destroying weapon, the Death Star, feel inadequate — was much more than a Wagnerian character in an American space opera. She was an actor and writer, whose semi-autobiographical novels plumbed the depths — alcoholism, drug abuse, a bipolar condition — with a comic touch that brought them in greater relief. Carrie herself suffered from some of these conditions. Which she never made it sound as if she was suffering.

Carrie’s roles in When Harry Met Sally, The Blues Brothers, and Shampoo have the same wry, understated humour that her novels have — most notably, Postcards From the Edge, and The Best Awful. She was sharp, and her inner Wilde came out best in her hilarious autobiography, Wishful Drinking (with its cover of Princess Leia bent over on a table holding an empty martini glass and some pills sprayed on the side) where she wrote about her own death: "I want it reported that I drowned in moonlight, strangled by my own bra." She died differently.