'Star Wars' actress Carrie Fisher has mid-air heart attack

Hollywood star Carrie Fisher was fighting for her life Friday after suffering a massive heart attack on a flight, emergency workers and witnesses said.

The 60-year-old "Star Wars" actress was flying from London to Los Angeles when she suffered cardiac arrest, and was given cardiopulmonary resuscitation by an emergency responder on board.

Fisher collapsed 15 minutes before the plane landed at LAX, according to celebrity news website TMZ, and was rushed to UCLA Medical Center on a ventilator.

TMZ, citing witnesses, said the actress's eyes were closed and she appeared unconscious as she was rushed through the terminal, where paramedics worked for 15 minutes before they could get a pulse.

The Los Angeles Times said her condition was critical, quoting an unnamed source who said the actress was "in a lot of distress on the flight."

The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) did not refer to the actress by name but confirmed it had responded to an alert just after midday over "a patient on an inbound flight in cardiac arrest."

"LAFD firefighter paramedics were standing by and provided immediate advanced life support and aggressively treated and transported the patient to a local hospital," spokesman Erik Scott told AFP.

United Airlines said medical personnel met Flight 935 from London upon arrival after the crew reported that a passenger was unresponsive.

Fisher was catapulted to worldwide stardom as the rebel warrior Princess Leia in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, which has been a cultural phenomenon since the release of the films from 1977 to 1983.

Steeped in Hollywood excess from an early age, she was the product of the four-year marriage of movie star Debbie Reynolds, best-known for her role in "Singin' In The Rain," and singer Eddie Fisher.

The relationship, and the happy home in Beverly Hills, came to an end when Fisher left Reynolds for her close friend, the actress Elizabeth Taylor.

- Searingly honest -

Fisher's co-stars led tributes as Hollywood reacted with shock to news of her collapse.

"As if 2016 couldn't get any worse... sending all our love to @carrieffisher" tweeted Mark Hamill, who plays her on-screen twin Luke Skywalker in the "Star Wars" saga.

The American actress has talked and written frequently about her years of drug addiction and mental illness.

Fisher is known for her searingly honest semi-autobiographical novels, including her best-selling debut "Postcards from the Edge" which she turned into a film of the same name in 1990.

She has given various interviews over the years about her diagnosis of bipolar disorder and addiction to prescription drugs and cocaine, which she admitted using on the set of "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980).

She has also discussed being treated with electroconvulsive therapy, in which small electric currents are passed through the brain, to trigger brief seizures.

Writer and actress Anna Akana, who said she was on board Fisher's flight, described the mid-air drama in a series of tweets, voicing her "shock and sadness."

"Don't know how else to process this but Carrie Fisher stopped breathing on the flight home. Hope she's gonna be OK," she said.

"So many thanks to the United flight crew who jumped into action, and the awesome doctor and nurse passengers who helped. Feel weird even tweeting about it but I JUST finished her book and was fangirling out over seeing her dog Gary in person."

Fisher's famous "Star Wars" character features as part of the storyline to spin-off "Rogue One," which is currently riding high in box offices around the globe, although the actress is understood not to have been involved in the production.

"The whole world is sending you so much love! Sending you the universe's most powerful Force," tweeted English actress Gwendoline Christie, who played the warrior Brienne of Tarth in HBO's "Game of Thrones" and Captain Phasma in Fisher's most recent "Star Wars" episode, "The Force Awakens."

ft/acb

source: news.abs-cbn.com

'Magnum, P.I.' creator Glen Larson dead at 77

Television writer-producer Glen Larson, whose works include "Magnum, P.I." and "Battlestar Galactica," has died of cancer at age 77.

The famed television titan died at UCLA Medical Center in Santa Monica, California, of esophageal cancer late Friday, his son James told The Hollywood Reporter.

Larson wrote and produced some of the best-known prime-time television series of the 1970s and 1980s -- often humorous, family-friendly programs that appealed to a wide audience.

He was behind series such as "It Takes a Thief," starring Robert Wagner, "McCloud," "Quincy, M.E." and "Knight Rider," featuring David Hasselhoff as a crime fighting hero with a superpowered Pontiac.

But Larson is perhaps best known for the 1980-1988 "Magnum, P.I." starring a mustachioed Tom Selleck as a private investigator in Hawaii.

"Battlestar Galactica" enjoyed a shorter run -- it was taken off air in 1979 after only one season, but went on to become a cult hit among loyal fans in the 2000s.

At a cost of more than $1 million per episode, Larson said the show could not be sustained, but he wished it had stayed on air for longer.

"I was vested emotionally in 'Battlestar,'" he said in a 2009 interview with the Archive of American Television. "I don't feel it really got its shot, and I can't blame anyone else; I was at the center of that."

Both "Battlestar Galactica" and "Knight Rider" were remade in the 2000s.

Mainstream appeal

Larson said his popularity was not accidental. Instead, he tailored his work for an audience whose tastes he tried to predict.

"I fell in step with an audience taste-level that I knew how to judge and deliver for consistently," he said.

While Larson enjoyed popularity and a loyal following, he did not see as much critical success.

Though nominated for three Primetime Emmy awards -- two for "McCloud" and one for "Quincy M.E." -- he never took home a statue for his work.

Larson said he had no regrets about his failure to win awards, and was satisfied with having pleased audiences during his lengthy television career.

He said his shows "were enjoyable, they had a pretty decent dose of humor. All struck a chord in the mainstream."

"What we weren't going to do was win a shelf full of Emmys," Larson said. "Ours were not the kind of shows that were doing anything more than reaching a core audience. I would like to think we brought a lot of entertainment into the living room."

Critics accused him of copying other series in his own shows, most notably with "Battlestar" which was thought to be based on "Star Wars," a claim Larson dismissed.

"Television networks are a lot like automobile manufacturers, or anyone else who's in commerce. If something out there catches on with the public... I guess you can call it 'market research,'" he said.

Born in Long Beach, California, Larson started out his career in the television business as an NBC page, following a stint as a singer with the pop group The Four Preps in the 1950s.

His first television credit came in 1966 as a writer on an episode of "The Fugitive."

Larson is also behind series such as "Alias Smith and Jones," "B.J. and the Bear," "Switch," and "The Six Million Dollar Man: Wine, Women and War."

He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985.

Larson is survived by his wife Jeannie, his brother Kenneth and nine children from previous marriages.

A memorial service will be held in the near future, his son said.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com