Debbie Reynolds died last night at the age of 84, one day after her daughter Carrie Fisher passed away. Reynolds had been at Fisher’s house on Wednesday planning her daughter’s funeral before apparently suffering a stroke and being rushed to the hospital. Of her final moments, Reynolds’ son Todd Fisher told Variety that “she wanted to be with Carrie,” and said to The Associated Press that Reynolds’ last words had been “‘I want to be with Carrie.'”
Reynolds’ film career stretched over decades. Her most iconic roles were Kathy Selden in the genre-defining movie musical Singin’ in the Rain, as well as the titular character in the 1964 movie adaptation of the Meredith Willson musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Other popular roles from her period as a go-to leading woman in the 1950s and ’60s include The Tender Trap, which she starred in alongside Frank Sinatra, and 1967’s dark comedy Divorce, American Style.
In 1969 and 1970, Reynolds starred in the sitcom The Debbie Reynolds Show on NBC. Later, she made numerous appearances on television, appearing on shows like The Golden Girls, Roseanne, and Will & Grace, and doing voice work. One of her biggest leading film roles of her later career was a star turn in 1996’s Mother, alongside actor/writer/director Albert Brooks. A recent notable role came as Liberace’s mother in Steven Soderbergh’s Michael-Douglas-starring HBO biopic Behind the Candelabra.
Reynolds’ sometimes-tumultuous relationship with Fisher is the subject of Fisher’s 1987 book—later, a HBO movie starring Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine—Postcards from the Edge.
