Debbie Reynolds Laid to Rest One Day After Carrie Fisher's Private Memorial Service
Debbie Reynolds laid to rest day after Carrie Fisher's private service
Debbie Reynolds' family and close friends gathered together on Friday for the funeral of the legendary actress, just one day after Reynolds' daughter Carrie Fisher's private memorial service took place on Thursday.
Reynolds' granddaughter, actress Billie Lourd, was once again present with her Scream Queens co-star, Taylor Lautner, as was Reynolds' son, Todd Fisher.
"The mood is very somber, friends and family are walking with their heads down and holding hands," an eyewitness at the funeral tells ET.
Reynolds' close friend, Ruta Lee, also spoke to ET about the "beautiful" and "quiet" funeral.
"It was beautiful, it was very quiet," Lee, who spoke at the funeral, says. "Today it focused a little bit more on Debbie, yesterday focused on Carrie. The two girls are being laid away in a beautiful crypt… mother and daughter forever."
Reynolds was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles, where she was buried along with some of Fisher's ashes. The burial location is near the resting places of family friends Bette Davis and Liberace.
A source tells ET that a public memorial for both Reynolds and Fisher is being planned for months down the road. Among those expected to attend are Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Fisher's ex-husband, singer Paul Simon, though details have not yet been finalized.
Reynolds died on Dec. 28 after suffering a stroke, just one day after her daughter died after going into cardiac arrest while on a flight from London to L.A. Reynolds was 84 years old, while Fisher was 60.
On Thursday, Fisher's memorial -- which took place at her home in Beverly Hills, California -- was attended by Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Meg Ryan, Courtney Love, Ed Begley Jr., Ellen Barkin, as well as her beloved dog, Gary. Streep was among the first to arrive, carrying white flowers.
Streep also delivered a eulogy for Fisher, according to People, and performed the actress' favorite song, "Happy Days Are Here Again," which had all the guests singing along.
Guests later reportedly dined on the same menu the Star Wars actress often served at her famous, star-studded parties at her home -- fried chicken, collard greens and cornbread.
Todd previously spoke to ET about his mother's state of mind during her final hours, and said that she "missed" Fisher.
"She missed her daughter and wanted to very much be with her," Todd said. "She had been very strong the last several days. [There was] enormous stress on her, obviously. And [the morning of her death] she said those words to me and 15 minutes later she had a stroke and virtually left."
Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds Laid to Rest Together
Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher were laid to rest on Friday in Los Angeles, one day after they were honored at a private memorial service.
Reynolds was buried along with some of her daughter's ashes, Ruta Lee, a friend of the "Singin' in the Rain" actress, told ABC News.
Lee added that Fisher's ashes were held in a pill-shaped urn, which she believed the "Star Wars" star would have found amusing.
The ceremony took place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, not far from where Fisher, 60, and Reynolds, 84, lived next door to one another. Fisher's brother Todd Fisher, daughter Billie Lourd, and half-sisters Joely and Tricia Lee Fisher were in attendance, and Lee made a speech and performed an impromptu musical number at the gravesite.
"It was a blessing," she said of being asked to sing.
Carrie Fisher died on Dec. 27, four days after going into cardiac arrest on a flight from London to Los Angeles. One day later, Reynolds suffered a stroke and died.
“She didn’t die of a broken heart,” Todd Fisher told ABC News of his mother. “She just left to be with Carrie. ... Carrie was a force of nature in her own right, you know, it took another force of nature to bridle and work with that and she was great with her.”
Remarkable tenderness: film reveals bond between Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher
There are few relationships so complex, tumultuous and unbreakable as that between a mother and daughter. But what about a mother who sweeps her child up in the world of showbiz, drags her on stage as a reluctant teenager and offers to oversee her losing her virginity, and give tips?
Such was the strange, often tortured but ultimately loving dynamic between Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, the Hollywood mother-daughter duo who passed away within a day of each other in December. A new HBO documentary, Bright Lights, which airs this week, followed the pair in 2014 and 2015 and reveals how they moved from a decade-long period of estrangement to become best friends and next-door neighbours, entirely interdependent on one another.
The documentary, made by Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens, was Fisher’s idea, as a way to preserve her mother’s legacy and the remarkable relationship the pair had. It was originally due to air in March, but was brought forward following their deaths, which shook Bloom and Stevens who had grown incredibly close to both Fisher and Reynolds over the two years.
“Yes, Carrie smoked up a storm and drank a hell of a lot of Coca Cola – though it’s worth noting that she had stopped smoking in recent months – but she was really on good form,” said Bloom. “She lived a hard life, she was unconventional but she was not expecting this at all – she was coming with Christmas presents and looking forward to seeing friends of ours.”
The closeness of Fisher and Reynolds in the final years of their lives form the focal point of the documentary. They lived next door to each other in an expansive Beverly Hills compound, formerly owned by Bette Davis, and Fisher was a daily visitor to her mother’s house, where they would chat, sing and eat together, accompanied by their dogs.
“I am my mother’s best friend, more than a daughter,” says Fisher in the film. “She wants me to be an extension of her wishes, an extension of her and to a great degree, sometimes more than I would ever want to, I know what my mother feels and wants.”
It was an affection that Bloom had not anticipated. “Their tenderness was most remarkable,” she said. “Even when they were making fun of each other or were incredibly frustrated with each other, there was always this underlying tenderness that no matter the circumstances of the day and how frustrating they were, that they would suffer anything for each other.
“I expected them both to be incredible individually but I didn’t expect them to be this lyrical duet.”
The hurdles of dysfunction the pair overcame are also central to their story. Fisher’s struggles with drugs and her mental health, and the volatile relationship with her mother, were partly portrayed in her semi-autobiographical book and screenplay, Postcards From the Edge, but the documentary goes further in revealing how alienated Fisher felt as a child and teenager.
“Family-wise we didn’t grow up with each other, we grew up around each other, like trees ... it was a prototype life,” she said. “We were always getting ready for a photoshoot.”
She desperately craved the attention of her father, singer Eddie Fisher, who left Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor when his children were very young, and – as he admitted himself in later years – was more focused on drugs than parenting.
There was also enormous pressure on Fisher from Reynolds to follow in her Hollywood footsteps, despite a reluctance on Fisher’s part. Footage shows an uncomfortable Fisher, aged just 15, being dragged onstage during one of her mother’s cabaret shows to sing Bridge Over Troubled Water, rolling her eyes as she finally walks off.
“The biggest thing I did that broke my mother’s heart was not do a nightclub act,” Fisher said in the documentary. “My mother would say: ‘Do drugs, do whatever you need to do, but why don’t you sing?’ That was my big rebellion.”
Yet her mother’s interference went even further, and Fisher reveals Reynolds even offered to help her daughter lose her virginity as a teenager. “I swear to God my mother offered for me and this guy Albert to have sex, and she would supervise Albert and I having sex. Actual having sex,” Fisher recalls to her childhood friend Griffin Dunne, the man who she chose to lose her virginity to after refusing her mother’s offer.
Nonetheless, Bloom said Fisher bore no lasting resentment towards her mother. “Carrie watched her mother her whole life,” she said. “And they always spoke. It’s been overstated in the press that there was a decade where they didn’t speak. But Carrie told me they did speak, they just spoke badly.”
Fisher’s struggles with mental health began at 13, when Reynolds said her “personality changed”. In the later years of her life, she was very open about her experiences with bipolar disorder and the documentary reveals Fisher had names for both sides of her personality: Rollicking Roy, when she felt ecstatic mania, and Sediment Pam “who stands on the shore and sobs”, when she felt low.
The film is also revealing about the extent that Reynolds struggled to come to terms with her own ageing, refusing to give up the stage and only performing her final stage show in 2012, aged 82. While Fisher was an open book, Reynolds was reticent to let down her guard in front of the camera, and so was a difficult subject to document. She refused to be filmed looking anything other than pristine and did not let the cameras in when she was ill.
“Debbie was difficult to document because you really want to get the private side of somebody and she wasn’t willing to share that with us,” said Bloom. “She was trained that when the camera is on, you are on.”
At all public appearances in her final years, Reynolds had appeared to be strong and lively, but the documentary reveals how much her health was suffering as she hit her 80s and how weak she had become.
“Age is horrible for all of us but she [Reynolds] falls from a greater height,” said Fisher. “It’s very frustrating for her because inside my mum is the same person and she does not want to retire.”
The pair saw the documentary before they died. Fisher had a “very emotional” reaction to it, said Bloom, but after a week came round to it, while Reynolds simply chose not to engage with the parts that bothered her. “In the end, they were both very supportive,” added Bloom. “The film mattered to them.”
Debbie Reynolds' family and close friends gathered together on Friday for the funeral of the legendary actress, just one day after Reynolds' daughter Carrie Fisher's private memorial service took place on Thursday.
Reynolds' granddaughter, actress Billie Lourd, was once again present with her Scream Queens co-star, Taylor Lautner, as was Reynolds' son, Todd Fisher.
"The mood is very somber, friends and family are walking with their heads down and holding hands," an eyewitness at the funeral tells ET.
Reynolds' close friend, Ruta Lee, also spoke to ET about the "beautiful" and "quiet" funeral.
"It was beautiful, it was very quiet," Lee, who spoke at the funeral, says. "Today it focused a little bit more on Debbie, yesterday focused on Carrie. The two girls are being laid away in a beautiful crypt… mother and daughter forever."
Reynolds was laid to rest at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Los Angeles, where she was buried along with some of Fisher's ashes. The burial location is near the resting places of family friends Bette Davis and Liberace.
A source tells ET that a public memorial for both Reynolds and Fisher is being planned for months down the road. Among those expected to attend are Meryl Streep, Tom Hanks, and Fisher's ex-husband, singer Paul Simon, though details have not yet been finalized.
Reynolds died on Dec. 28 after suffering a stroke, just one day after her daughter died after going into cardiac arrest while on a flight from London to L.A. Reynolds was 84 years old, while Fisher was 60.
On Thursday, Fisher's memorial -- which took place at her home in Beverly Hills, California -- was attended by Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Meg Ryan, Courtney Love, Ed Begley Jr., Ellen Barkin, as well as her beloved dog, Gary. Streep was among the first to arrive, carrying white flowers.
Streep also delivered a eulogy for Fisher, according to People, and performed the actress' favorite song, "Happy Days Are Here Again," which had all the guests singing along.
Guests later reportedly dined on the same menu the Star Wars actress often served at her famous, star-studded parties at her home -- fried chicken, collard greens and cornbread.
Todd previously spoke to ET about his mother's state of mind during her final hours, and said that she "missed" Fisher.
"She missed her daughter and wanted to very much be with her," Todd said. "She had been very strong the last several days. [There was] enormous stress on her, obviously. And [the morning of her death] she said those words to me and 15 minutes later she had a stroke and virtually left."
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Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds Laid to Rest Together
Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher were laid to rest on Friday in Los Angeles, one day after they were honored at a private memorial service.
Reynolds was buried along with some of her daughter's ashes, Ruta Lee, a friend of the "Singin' in the Rain" actress, told ABC News.
Lee added that Fisher's ashes were held in a pill-shaped urn, which she believed the "Star Wars" star would have found amusing.
The ceremony took place at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills, not far from where Fisher, 60, and Reynolds, 84, lived next door to one another. Fisher's brother Todd Fisher, daughter Billie Lourd, and half-sisters Joely and Tricia Lee Fisher were in attendance, and Lee made a speech and performed an impromptu musical number at the gravesite.
"It was a blessing," she said of being asked to sing.
Carrie Fisher died on Dec. 27, four days after going into cardiac arrest on a flight from London to Los Angeles. One day later, Reynolds suffered a stroke and died.
“She didn’t die of a broken heart,” Todd Fisher told ABC News of his mother. “She just left to be with Carrie. ... Carrie was a force of nature in her own right, you know, it took another force of nature to bridle and work with that and she was great with her.”
Remarkable tenderness: film reveals bond between Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher
There are few relationships so complex, tumultuous and unbreakable as that between a mother and daughter. But what about a mother who sweeps her child up in the world of showbiz, drags her on stage as a reluctant teenager and offers to oversee her losing her virginity, and give tips?
Such was the strange, often tortured but ultimately loving dynamic between Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher, the Hollywood mother-daughter duo who passed away within a day of each other in December. A new HBO documentary, Bright Lights, which airs this week, followed the pair in 2014 and 2015 and reveals how they moved from a decade-long period of estrangement to become best friends and next-door neighbours, entirely interdependent on one another.
The documentary, made by Alexis Bloom and Fisher Stevens, was Fisher’s idea, as a way to preserve her mother’s legacy and the remarkable relationship the pair had. It was originally due to air in March, but was brought forward following their deaths, which shook Bloom and Stevens who had grown incredibly close to both Fisher and Reynolds over the two years.
“Yes, Carrie smoked up a storm and drank a hell of a lot of Coca Cola – though it’s worth noting that she had stopped smoking in recent months – but she was really on good form,” said Bloom. “She lived a hard life, she was unconventional but she was not expecting this at all – she was coming with Christmas presents and looking forward to seeing friends of ours.”
The closeness of Fisher and Reynolds in the final years of their lives form the focal point of the documentary. They lived next door to each other in an expansive Beverly Hills compound, formerly owned by Bette Davis, and Fisher was a daily visitor to her mother’s house, where they would chat, sing and eat together, accompanied by their dogs.
“I am my mother’s best friend, more than a daughter,” says Fisher in the film. “She wants me to be an extension of her wishes, an extension of her and to a great degree, sometimes more than I would ever want to, I know what my mother feels and wants.”
It was an affection that Bloom had not anticipated. “Their tenderness was most remarkable,” she said. “Even when they were making fun of each other or were incredibly frustrated with each other, there was always this underlying tenderness that no matter the circumstances of the day and how frustrating they were, that they would suffer anything for each other.
“I expected them both to be incredible individually but I didn’t expect them to be this lyrical duet.”
The hurdles of dysfunction the pair overcame are also central to their story. Fisher’s struggles with drugs and her mental health, and the volatile relationship with her mother, were partly portrayed in her semi-autobiographical book and screenplay, Postcards From the Edge, but the documentary goes further in revealing how alienated Fisher felt as a child and teenager.
“Family-wise we didn’t grow up with each other, we grew up around each other, like trees ... it was a prototype life,” she said. “We were always getting ready for a photoshoot.”
She desperately craved the attention of her father, singer Eddie Fisher, who left Reynolds for Elizabeth Taylor when his children were very young, and – as he admitted himself in later years – was more focused on drugs than parenting.
There was also enormous pressure on Fisher from Reynolds to follow in her Hollywood footsteps, despite a reluctance on Fisher’s part. Footage shows an uncomfortable Fisher, aged just 15, being dragged onstage during one of her mother’s cabaret shows to sing Bridge Over Troubled Water, rolling her eyes as she finally walks off.
“The biggest thing I did that broke my mother’s heart was not do a nightclub act,” Fisher said in the documentary. “My mother would say: ‘Do drugs, do whatever you need to do, but why don’t you sing?’ That was my big rebellion.”
Yet her mother’s interference went even further, and Fisher reveals Reynolds even offered to help her daughter lose her virginity as a teenager. “I swear to God my mother offered for me and this guy Albert to have sex, and she would supervise Albert and I having sex. Actual having sex,” Fisher recalls to her childhood friend Griffin Dunne, the man who she chose to lose her virginity to after refusing her mother’s offer.
Nonetheless, Bloom said Fisher bore no lasting resentment towards her mother. “Carrie watched her mother her whole life,” she said. “And they always spoke. It’s been overstated in the press that there was a decade where they didn’t speak. But Carrie told me they did speak, they just spoke badly.”
Fisher’s struggles with mental health began at 13, when Reynolds said her “personality changed”. In the later years of her life, she was very open about her experiences with bipolar disorder and the documentary reveals Fisher had names for both sides of her personality: Rollicking Roy, when she felt ecstatic mania, and Sediment Pam “who stands on the shore and sobs”, when she felt low.
The film is also revealing about the extent that Reynolds struggled to come to terms with her own ageing, refusing to give up the stage and only performing her final stage show in 2012, aged 82. While Fisher was an open book, Reynolds was reticent to let down her guard in front of the camera, and so was a difficult subject to document. She refused to be filmed looking anything other than pristine and did not let the cameras in when she was ill.
“Debbie was difficult to document because you really want to get the private side of somebody and she wasn’t willing to share that with us,” said Bloom. “She was trained that when the camera is on, you are on.”
At all public appearances in her final years, Reynolds had appeared to be strong and lively, but the documentary reveals how much her health was suffering as she hit her 80s and how weak she had become.
“Age is horrible for all of us but she [Reynolds] falls from a greater height,” said Fisher. “It’s very frustrating for her because inside my mum is the same person and she does not want to retire.”
The pair saw the documentary before they died. Fisher had a “very emotional” reaction to it, said Bloom, but after a week came round to it, while Reynolds simply chose not to engage with the parts that bothered her. “In the end, they were both very supportive,” added Bloom. “The film mattered to them.”
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