Hollywood icon, Debbie Reynolds dies one day after daughter, Carrie Fisher passed on
By Rita Chioma
Few days after the shocking death of British music star, George Michael, another death has struck the entertainment industry.
Debbie Reynolds, actress and singer, passed away at the age of 84.
Reynolds who lost her daughter, Carrie Fisher, on Tuesday, December 27, 2016, days after suffering a heart attack on a plane last week, suffered stroke hours after she learnt of her daughter’s untimely death.
“She’s now with Carrie and we’re all heartbroken,” Reynolds’ son, Todd Fisher, said.
The actress made her acting debut in 1948, in the movie “June Bride.” She however rose to fame at age 19, when she starred in the 1952 musical classic “Singin’ in the Rain.”
She made a name for herself as the girl-next-door lead of a string of hit musicals in the 1950s after being discovered by MGM studio bosses at a beauty contest in southern California, going on to earn her lone Oscar nomination for playing the title role in 1964’s “The Unsinkable Molly Brown.”
She is best remembered as sweet but shy voice artist Kathy Selden in “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952) and holding her own despite being cast opposite tap-dancing superstar, Gene Kelly, who was more than twice her age.
Off-screen, she was known as the wronged party in one of Hollywood’s most notorious scandals, when her husband, singer Eddie Fisher, left her for her friend and fellow screen icon Elizabeth Taylor.
Her 2013 autobiography “Unsinkable: A Memoir” detailed the highs and lows of her rocky personal life and a career which was still going strong into her 80s as she performed her one-woman stage show.
“‘Singin’ in the Rain’ and childbirth were the hardest things I ever had to do in my life,” she wrote in an earlier autobiography entitled “Debbie.”
