CARRIE Fisher, the actor best known for her role as Princess Leia in the Stars Wars movies, has died at the age of 60.

She had become ill on Friday while on a plane between London and Los Angeles and had spent the last four days in hospital.

The news was confirmed by her daughter Billie Lourd’s publicist last night: “It is with a very deep sadness that Billie Lourd confirms that her beloved mother Carrie Fisher passed away at 8.55 this morning. She was loved by the world and she will be missed profoundly. Our entire family thanks you for your thoughts and prayers.”

On Christmas Day it seemed as if Fisher was going to pull through, with tweets from her family saying she was in a stable condition.

The shock of her death hit family, friends, fans, and colleagues hard.

Mark Hamill, who played Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, simply tweeted: “no words #devastated”

Fisher was born into Hollywood royalty, the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher. Her life was never even close to normal. Her dad left when she was just two to marry Elizabeth Taylor. She grew up in the spotlight, but her part in Star Wars when she was just 19 made her one of the most famous faces on the planet.

There were the other roles in films like When Harry Met Sally, and the Blues Brothers. In later years, many directors turned to her when the words they were filming weren’t quite right. Often uncredited, her work as a script doctor undoubtedly saved many Hollywood movies.

Fisher was an accomplished and brilliant writer, with four novels and three memoirs to her name, including the semi-autobiographical Postcards from the Edge, about an actress and recovering drug addict trying to resurrect a career and deal with an overbearing mother. The New York Times called it hilarious, gutsy and merciless.

Fisher was always very open about her personal life, drug use, depression and anxiety, and her struggles often inspired her work.

There was the marriage to Paul Simon (part of Graceland is about that relationship), there was the recent confession of an affair with Harrison Ford when they first worked together 40 years ago, and there was the relationship with agent Bryan Lourd, with whom she had Billie.

In a recent interview in Rolling Stone to promote her new book, she was asked if she feared death: “No,” she replied. “I fear dying. Anything with pain associated with it, I don’t like. I’ve been there for a couple of people when they were dying; it didn’t look like fun. But if I was gonna do it, I’d want someone like me around. And I will be there.”

In her 2008 memoir Wishful Drinking, she gave journalists specific instructions on how her death should be reported: Carrie Fisher died December 27, 2016, drowned in moonlight, strangled by her own bra.