Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher: Their Parallel Lives

They died within a day of one another, but that's not the only parallel in the lives of Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher.

Reynolds — whose real name was Mary Frances Reynolds — was born in El Paso, Texas, on April 1, 1932, to humble parents who relocated their family to Burbank, California, for a better chance at life. After winning a beauty contest in 1948, two talent scouts from MGM and Warner Bros. approached Reynolds with contracts — a coin flip landed in favor of the latter, marking the beginning of an enduring showbiz career.

According to Texas Monthly, after being crowned Miss Burbank and signing with Warner Bros., studio head Jack Warner thought to give her the stage name Debbie because it was "a cute name for a little girl" — and the rest, as they say, was history.

Reynolds' rise to stardom came quickly throughout the '50s with starring roles in films like Singin' in the Rain (1952), Bundle of Joy (1956) and Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), which earned her continued success as one of the darlings of Hollywood's golden age.

Amid her budding career, Reynolds welcomed her first baby, daughter Carrie Fisher, with her then-husband and entertainer, Eddie Fisher, on Oct. 21, 1956. Considering her parentage, Carrie inheriting a passion for performing seemed written in the stars.

Following her mother's footsteps, Carrie landed her first movie gig as a teenager in 1975's Shampoo. Like Reynolds, Carrie, too, achieved an early career break by landing a role in the Star Wars trilogy as Princess Leia, a character whose cultural impact not only made Carrie a household name on Earth but in a galaxy far, far away.

Unfortunately, an indelible Hollywood legacy isn't all the mother and daughter share in common. Both endured difficult marriages and financial and personal hardships that often shook — but never shattered — their loving bond. So when Carrie and Reynolds died just one day apart in December 2016, it left an unfillable void in their wake.

From their signature movies to their troubled marriages, the mother-daughter duo's careers were filled with more coincidences than none. Here are a few instances where their lives lined up.

Both had breakout roles at 19

Reynolds had one of those classic Hollywood discovery stories. As a contestant in the Miss Burbank beauty pageant when she was 16, a talent scout from Warner Bros. discovered her and signed her to a contract with the powerhouse studio.

She made five films in three years with luminaries like Lana Turner and Fred Astaire — but her sixth, Singin' in the Rain, turned Reynolds from just another ingénue into America's Sweetheart. She was 19.

Growing up the daughter of Reynolds and singer and actor Eddie, Carrie was surrounded by the illustrious world of film, theater and television. Despite ensemble roles in Broadway's Irene (alongside Reynolds) and a film debut in the Warren Beatty-led Shampoo, she didn't have her breakout gig until landing a part in the 1977 sci-fi action film Star Wars.

Carrie held her own auditioning for the movie at 19 alongside future costar and off-screen love interest Harrison Ford. She would go on to score the role of Princess Leia, reprising the part in other franchise installments.

Both played fearless women throughout their careers

Princess Leia suffered no fools. Neither did Kathy Selden, Reynolds' chorus girl-turned-movie star in Singin' in the Rain. These were two strong, independent female characters who had ownership over their lives — mold-breaking themes at the time for their respective film genres.

They were just two roles in a long line of strong women the actresses portrayed on-screen. There was her turn in 1989's When Harry Met Sally, where she played Marie, the best friend of Meg Ryan's Sally Albright, who felt no social shame being a single New Yorker dating a married man. Then there was Carrie's soap opera casting agent Betsy Faye Sharon in 1991's Soapdish, a self-proclaimed "bitch" who had no problem bossing around her male actors (and, occasionally, sleeping with them). 

For Reynolds, one can look no further than 1964's The Unsinkable Molly Brown. As the titular character — a no-nonsense, tough-as-nails survivor of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 — Reynolds embodied Brown's "unsinkable" spirit. Big, brassy and bold, she pushed through every obstacle in her path to get her happy ending. The part earned Reynolds an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress and generations of female admirers who would not be afraid to speak their minds.

Both were animated personalities

In addition to their live-action roles, the mother-daughter acting duo regularly worked on animated projects — both voicing characters on Fox's Family Guy. 

Reynolds began her voice-over career with the 1973 animated adaptation of E.B. White's classic tale Charlotte’s Web, voicing Charlotte, the loving spider who helps a pig named Wilbur discover his confidence. She would later voice characters on Kim Possible, Rugrats, The Penguins of Madagascar and The 7D.

Carrie voiced Princess Leia in several animated Star Wars video games and shorts. She also participated in the animated films Happily Ever After and Two Daddies? Family Guy was her most frequent voice-over gig; she appeared on 25 episodes across 12 years, playing Angela, the head of the shipping department of the Pawtucket Brewery and supervisor of Peter Griffin and Opie.

Both were unlucky in love

While their on-screen careers may have brought them success, Reynolds and her daughter were less lucky in their romantic lives.

Reynolds' first husband, Eddie, embroiled her in one of the greatest scandals in Hollywood history. The couple was best friends with another A-list celebrity duo: Elizabeth Taylor and Mike Todd. After Todd died in a 1958 plane crash, Eddie and Taylor became an item, leading to his widely publicized divorce from Reynolds in 1959 and subsequent marriage to Taylor that same year.

In 1960, Reynolds married businessman Harry Karl. They were both worth millions at the time, but Karl was a notorious gambler who lost all of his money — and hers too. After 13 years together, the couple divorced in 1973, leaving Reynolds broke.

"It was very difficult," Reynolds said on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011. "Everything went — homes and everything. Every bill he had — he owed $10 million — so then I got to pay that off. Everything was taken by the government."

She joked, "I had such good taste in men."

Carrie's love life wasn't much better. She had an explosive love affair with singer Paul Simon, whom she wed in 1983 and divorced a year later. They continued to date, on and off, for about a decade before ending their relationship.

In the biography Homeward Bound: The Life of Paul Simon, author Peter Ames Carlin described their tumultuous relationship as a mix of love and personal crises stemming from their swinging states of depression, Carrie's drug use and an array of personal insecurities.

After splitting for good, Carrie went on to have a relationship with talent agent Bryan Lourd. Though they never married and separated once Lourd came out as gay, they had one child together: actress Billie Lourd. Bryan later married American businessman Bruce Bozzi in 2016.

Both were outspoken — and learned from each other

Despite their personal struggles, Reynolds and Carire never shied from talking frankly about their pains. Whether it was their divorces, the perils of dating, aging in Hollywood or their own relationship, both were outspoken and unfiltered in interviews throughout their careers.

Carrie was an especially passionate mental health advocate after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder in her late 20s. Managing her mental illness with medication and electroconvulsive therapy, she often wrote about her treatment and the lessons she learned by embracing the disorder. In an inspiring letter written for The Guardian in November 2016, just weeks before her death, Fisher showed how fearless she was in sharing her experience with the bipolar community.

"I was told that I was bipolar when I was 24 but was unable to accept that diagnosis until I was 28 when I overdosed and finally got sober," she wrote in response to a bipolar writer named Alex, who sought Carrie's guidance on navigating life with the disease. "Only then was I able to see nothing else could explain away my behavior."

The mother and daughter also listened to each other — and learned from their mistakes. As Reynolds explained to Winfrey in their joint interview in 2011, witnessing Carrie manage her bipolar disorder helped make her more resilient.

"I am a strong person," Reynolds said. "I'm not afraid of almost anything, and that's a lot because of [Carrie's] example."

Both were loving mothers

Though they loved each other until the end, Reynolds and Carrie had a somewhat complicated bond — most memorably documented in Postcards from the Edge, the 1990 movie based on Carrie's 1987 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name.

Desperately seeking her own identity from the shadow of her mother's fame, Carrie became estranged from Reynolds. The two barely spoke for almost 10 years. 

"We had a fairly volatile relationship earlier on in my 20s," Carrie said on The Oprah Winfrey Show. "I didn’t want to be around her. I did not want to be Debbie Reynolds' daughter."

Reynolds added, "It's very hard when your child doesn't want to talk to you, and you want to talk to them, and you want to touch them, you want to hold them. It was a total estrangement. She didn't talk to me for probably 10 years. So that was the most difficult time of all. Very painful, very heartbreaking."

Ultimately, time began to heal their relationship. 

"It took like 30 years for Carrie to be really happy with me,” Reynolds told PEOPLE in 1988. "I don’t know what the problem ever was. I've had to work at it. I've always been a good mother, but I've always been in show business, and I've been onstage, and I don’t bake cookies, and I don’t stay home."

Carrie was sure to avoid repeating those mistakes with her own daughter, Billie. The two were incredibly close — with the Scream Queens star even appearing in 2015's Star Wars: The Force Awakens alongside her mother. 

"I'm always proud of my mother; she's killing it right now,” Billie told PEOPLE in 2016. "She's incredible."

Billie also praised her grandmotehr Reynolds. 

"She's had such an incredible career, and she's done so many shows that people don't even know about. She performs in Reno, she performs all over the country. It's an incredible thing for people to see what a full star she is. She really does it all."

Carrie was aboard an 11-hour flight from London to Los Angeles on Dec. 23, 2016, when she went into cardiac arrest. She died in the hospital four days later, on Dec. 27, at 60.

Reynolds died at age 84 on Dec. 28, 2016 — just one day after Carrie. According to a TMZ report, she was only thinking about her daughter in her final moments, telling her son, Todd Fisher, hours before her stroke, "I miss her so much; I want to be with Carrie."

For two women and Hollywood icons who led such parallel lives, it almost seems fitting that their stories would come to an end at the same time.

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