The Ups And Downs Of Carrie Fisher & Paul Simon's Rollercoaster Relationship

It's a common fantasy that two people who are meant to be together can team up to take on any obstacle that gets in their way, and that true love can make anything work. Sadly, there are times when two people who seem destined to be together just can't make it work, and almost no celebrity romance showcases this tragedy more than Paul Simon and Carrie Fisher.

Like so many great love stories, the two longtime romantic partners came from different worlds. The daughter of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher was born into Hollywood royalty, while Simon was the son of first-generation immigrants and grew up in a modest home in Queens, New York. Simon became famous in 1966 when he and his musical partner Art Garfunkel released the albums "Sounds of Silence" and "Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme." At the same time, Fisher would spend her childhood in the spotlight, even getting up on stage and singing Simon's classic song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" as part of her mother's stage act when she was a teen. 

Simon and Fisher would meet at a time when her career was taking off, and his was already firmly in place. The duo would enter an on-again-off-again romance that lasted 12 years but never landed on solid footing, though it gave them both plenty of material to use in their writing. Through it all, from the intense love and the breakups to the short-lived marriage and the years of dating that followed it, Fisher and Simon kept trying to be a part of each other's lives. No matter how hard they worked at it, however, the quiet songwriter and the vibrant actor who would become an accomplished writer herself could never get their love story to end with "happily ever after." 

When Paul Simon and Carrie Fisher met in 1977, Simon was in a relationship with "The Shining" star Shelley Duvall. After the two had broken up, Simon and Fisher ran into one another again at a taping of "Saturday Night Live." From there, they were off to the races. Describing their connection in her autobiography, Fisher wrote, "Paul and I had a secret handshake of shared sensibility. We understood each other perfectly." Unfortunately, understanding one another and making things work don't always go hand in hand.

Fisher, just 21, and Simon, 36, soon moved into an apartment in Manhattan's Central Park West, but the actor's lifestyle caused a lot of friction. Fisher had started to experiment with drugs at 13, and began taking psychedelics and pain meds while making "Star Wars." As Fisher explained in her autobiography, "Wishful Drinking," "You know how they say religion is the opiate of the masses? Well, I took masses of opiates religiously."

Fisher's drug use, as well as their busy lives as a rising star in one of the biggest movies of all time and a popular musician, led to the two breaking up and getting back together several times over the next three years. Regardless, Fisher and Simon couldn't stay away from each other, even after Fisher got engaged to someone else.

During an "off-again" period in their relationship, Carrie Fisher went off to make "The Blues Brothers" with John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. It was while filming that Aykroyd fell in love with Fisher, even as Fisher tried to fix things with Paul Simon. Speaking at a memorial service for Fisher, Aykroyd explained (via People), "Here I found myself in love with a woman who was returning to a former intimate, and might I say a much better choice." Still, Aykroyd and Fisher almost married after he saved her life on set. 

As Fisher explained to the Chicago Tribune, Aykroyd was worried that she wasn't eating enough and was making sure she had a healthy meal when Fisher began to choke on a Brussels sprout. "He thought I was laughing, and then he saw that I was dying, and he did the Heimlich maneuver, and then like 10 minutes later he asked me to marry him, and I thought, 'I better marry him. What if that happens again?'"

Fisher wasn't kidding, and the two began to plan their future together, even buying rings. It didn't last, though. Fisher broke up with Aykroyd shortly after they finished filming, and he drove her to the airport so she could get on a plane and reconnect with Paul Simon. 

Carrie Fisher and Paul Simon restarted their romance, but it didn't go any better than the last time. Looking back on it all in an interview that appears in the documentary "In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon," the singer couldn't fully explain what it was that kept drawing him to Fisher. He said, "I mean, what was I thinking? Certainly not thinking about life, you know, that you actually, like, have to stop."

On the contrary, Fisher knew what it was about Simon that drew her to him, writing in her autobiography, "Now Paul is a short, Jewish singer. Eddie Fisher is a short, Jewish singer. Short. Jewish. Singer. Any questions?" Eddie Fisher, Carrie's father, famously left her mother for Elizabeth Taylor when Carrie was just three, and that loss clearly led the "Postcards from the Edge" writer to seek out a father figure in Simon.

The two continued to fight, but seemingly couldn't imagine life apart. Instead of doing the logical thing and accepting that they may not be able to live together, Simon and Fisher chose to follow their hearts and tried to force themselves to overcome the aspects of their personalities that had them at one another's throats. They thought their memories of better times could protect them from the present; it was, as Fisher put it, "the triumph of nostalgia over judgement."

Simon and Fisher made it official in August 1983, exchanging vows in Simon's apartment between shows of his reunion tour with Art Garfunkel. The newlyweds honeymooned in Egypt and even appeared together in Lorne Michaels' short-lived "Saturday Night Live" replacement, "The New Show." However, the problems that existed before the couple's marriage continued, and they divorced less than a year later. 

While most romances come to an end when the divorce is finalized, Carrie Fisher and Paul Simon's relationship wasn't like most romances. After ending their marriage, the two spent some time apart, but were soon talking again. Of course, the talking led to a rekindled love, and they moved back in together, perhaps hoping that the third time would indeed be the charm. As usual, the same issues persisted, and while the good times were supposedly very good, the bad times were supposedly very bad. Perhaps hoping to find a path forward, Fisher and Simon headed to the Amazon for a vacation.

While on that journey, Fisher and Simon decided to take a different type of trip and drank a psychedelic tea together. It was during that experience that Fisher finally accepted that she and Simon would never be able to make it work. After spending the last 12 years getting together and breaking up, Fisher and Simon entered the Amazon as a couple and left single.

Looking back on it all in her autobiography, Fisher wrote, "I was really good for material, but when it came to day-to-day living, I was more than he could take." For his side of the story, Simon's song "Hearts and Bones" breaks down his feelings on his time with Fisher, singing "One and one-half wandering Jews/Returned to their natural coasts/To resume old acquaintances/And step out occasionally/And speculate who had been damaged the most."

With the trip to the Amazon, Carrie Fisher and Paul Simon's 12-year relationship had come to a close. Not long after, Fisher suffered an overdose and entered rehab. The experience would lead to her first novel, "Postcards from the Edge," which was later turned into a movie starring Meryl Streep.

The actor would also become an in-demand script doctor, using her wit and skills to fix up screenplays for the movies "Sister Act," "The Wedding Singer," and "The River Wild." Fisher entered a relationship with agent Bryan Lourd, and the two had a daughter, Billie Lourd. Fisher went on to advocate for causes she believed in and spoke out about her struggles with bipolar disorder and drug addiction. In the last days of 2016, Fisher suffered a heart attack while flying from London to Los Angeles. Four days later, Fisher passed away at the age of 60. Her mother, Debbie Reynolds, died the next day. 

Paul Simon met his third wife, musician Edie Brickell, in 1988. The two married in 1992 and have three children together (Simon has a fourth child from his first marriage). When it came to his time with Fisher, Simon tended to avoid the subject in interviews, telling Rolling Stone in 2011, "I don't want to talk about Carrie. I don't mean I dislike her. I don't dislike Carrie Fisher. I just don't want to get into it." When Fisher died, Simon took to X (then Twitter) to express his grief, writing in a now-deleted post that was saved by Variety, "Yesterday was a horrible day. Carrie was a special, wonderful girl. It's too soon."