Carrie Fisher and her mom Debbie Reynolds, who recently passed away just one day apart, didn't always have a smooth relationship. "I found it difficult to share my mother with her adoring fans who treated her like she was part of their family," said Fisher while presenting her mother with a lifetime achievement award at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Still, the two screen legends grew closer in the years before their deaths, and when Fisher died, aged 60, from a heart attack on December 27th, TMZ reported that Reynold's parting words to her son, Todd, were, "I miss her so much. I want to be with Carrie." Just fifteen minutes later, Reynolds suffered a fatal stroke at the age of 84. In tribute to this much-loved, and much-missed duo, see below for a heartwarming and occasionally heartbreaking collection of photographs of mother and daughter throughout the years. (h/t: vintage everyday)
Pop singer Eddie Fisher and actor Debbie Reynolds in the first picture with daughter, Carrie, who was born on 21 October 1956
Image credits: George Rinhart
Eddie Fisher and wife, Debbie Reynolds, gaze proudly at their baby daughter in 1956
Image credits: Bettmann
‘Who’s more famous than Debbie and Eddie? C-3PO and Darth Vader,’ Fisher said in the same 1983 interview. Eddie Fisher was one of the most successful pop artists of the 1950s; the pair divorced in 1959. Reynolds/Fisher family in 1956
Image credits: REX/Shutterstock
The young Fisher family in happier times, 1956
Image credits: ZUMA PRESS/MEGA
A smiling Carrie with her proud parents, 1956
Image credits: ZUMA PRESS/MEGA
Debbie Reynolds with her daughter Carrie Fisher, 23 months old, smiles as she leaves the house September 9, 1958 to visit friends in Los Angeles, California. Husband Eddie Fisher and Miss Reynolds later revealed their separation
Image credits: LA Times
Debbie Reynolds with her daughter in 1958
Image credits: Everett Collection
Before the split, Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds also had a son together, Todd Fisher, born in February 1958
Image credits: AP
Reynolds with her son and daughter in 1958
Image credits: Everett Collection
Fisher, three, gives Reynolds a hug in their home in West Los Angeles in 1959
Image credits: Ray Graham/LA Times via Getty Images
Reynolds and Fisher on the set of Say One For Me in 1959. Fisher said: ‘My mother would get up in the morning as my mother, and then she’d go into this big closet she had … she’d go in on this end as my mom, and she’d come out the other end as Debbie Reynolds. It was like a car wash for celebrities.’ quote from Oprah Winfrey Show in 2011
Image credits: Everett/REX/Shutterstock
Reynolds with her son and daughter in 1959
Image credits: Everett Collection
Actress Debbie Reynolds and daughter Carrie have contrasting expressions prior to boarding an American Airlines jet at LaGuardia Airport here, June 3, 1959. Debbie was en route to Hollywood to complete scenes for a new movie
Image credits: Bettmann
Debbie Reynolds is interviewed in her hotel room while 2-year-old Carrie squeals with delight and brandishes a pinwheel in 1959
Image credits: Bettmann/Getty Images
Debbie Reynolds on set with her daughter in 1959
Image credits: AP
Reynolds is pictured in 1959 with both her children while she works long hours on the set of Say One For Me, so that she can fly to Spain and start filming another movie, "It Started with a Kiss"
Image credits: AP
Here’s Reynolds with her children in Hollywood in 1960
Image credits: Bruce Bailey / Getty Images
Carrie watches her mother perform on stage, 1963
Image credits: WireImage
Debbie Reynolds with her daughter Carrie Fisher in 1965
Image credits: REX Shutterstock
Fisher and Reynolds at Reynolds’ opening night at the Desert Inn in Las Vegas in 1971
Image credits: Jim Borrup/EPA
A teenage Carrie Fisher with Debbie Reynolds in 1972
Image credits: Globe Photos/REX/Shutterstock
A teenage Carrie and her mother in 1972
Image credits: Globe Photos/REX/Shutterstock
his picture shows the mother-daughter duo in 1972, five years before Carrie would appear as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars
Image credits: Dove
Reynolds and Fisher at the School Benefit at Town Hall in New York, 1972
Image credits: Ron Galella
Carrie and Todd Fisher and Debbie Reynolds at the opening of the musical Irene at Minskoff Theater in New York, 1973. In 1977, Carrie Fisher would make her breakthrough in Star Wars. ‘People used to call her Debbie Reynolds’ daughter,’ her mother later said. ‘Now they call me Princess Leia’s mother!’
Image credits: Ron Galella
Mother and daughter perform together in 1974. ‘If anything, my mother taught me how to sur-thrive. That’s my word for it,’ Fisher said in 2010
Image credits: REX/Shutterstock
Carrie, joined by her mother, after she opened in the Broadway production of Censored Scenes From King Kong in 1980
Image credits: AP
Here the pair smiles in 1983 at a crowd that has gathered to celebrate Reynolds’ return to Broadway in Woman of the Year
Image credits: Nancy Kaye / AP
Carrie with her mother Debbie in 1983
Image credits: AP
After Reynolds won the the fifth annual Gypsy Award for excellence in dance in 1991
Image credits: Mark J. Terrill / AP