Elizabeth Taylor ‘Loved’ Former Stepdaughter Carrie Fisher After 1 ‘Totally Weird’ Incident
Actor Carrie Fisher rubbed elbows with many famous people throughout her lifetime. Among those was Elizabeth Taylor, who was actually her stepmother for a brief period. But the two women didn’t become friends until later in life. Discover what event led to their loving relationship.
Carrie Fisher’s dad, Eddie Fisher, married Elizabeth Taylor
Carrie Fisher was born to Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds in 1956. Soon after, her brother, Todd Fisher, came along. But in 1959, Eddie divorced Reynolds and married her friend, Elizabeth Taylor, with who he bonded while both grieved the death of her previous husband, Mike Todd.
Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor divorced in 1964, though their relationship ended years earlier. In Carrie Fisher’s memoir Shockaholic, she referred to her father as Taylor’s “interim spouse.” “My father kept Elizabeth Taylor warm and entertained and bejeweled between Mike Todd and Richard Burton,” she concluded.
Fisher ‘didn’t really know’ Taylor for most of her life
Though Taylor was her stepmother for several years, she and Fisher didn’t crow acquainted until the latter was an adult. The author cited a couple of instances in which they “crossed paths,” but they didn’t have a relationship. “The truth was, up until that point I didn’t really know Elizabeth at all,” Fisher wrote of one later-in-life encounter.
Fisher spoke at a ’90s AIDS fundraiser chaired by Taylor. At the event, she joked that the flowers she had received from her once-stepmother before it were “the long-awaited apology for having stolen my father from me all those years ago.” This joke earned her plenty of laughs, as well as an invite to a party at Taylor’s house.
Taylor pushed Fisher into a pool
At the party, Fisher confronted Taylor about something she’d heard Taylor had said about Reynolds. Taylor then told her she was going to push her in the pool. She did precisely that — Fisher even provided photographic proof. What’s more, she wrote that she was “finally able to begin the friendship with my former stepmother” after it.
“Somehow this entire semi-event-ish moment made perfect sense,” Fisher wrote. “For whatever totally weird and insane reason, maybe everything in our tragically well-documented relationship had been leading up to this moment,” she added, writing that they “fulfilled our destiny.”
Fisher and Taylor became friends
Somehow, Fisher felt that the moment between the two was symbolic. “We could now have a relationship that, though born out of an ultimate tabloid phenomenon, was so lifelike it almost had a genuine quality of love,” she explained. And indeed, after that, they began to spend time together.
“Ever since then, she loved me and I her,” Fisher wrote. “Simple as that. This was how we neutralized anything that might have otherwise been toxic to our situation.” Through her daughter, Reynolds managed to repair her own previously fractured relationship with Taylor.
