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.