James Blunt claims 'pressure' to be 'thin' contributed to Carrie Fisher's death
James Blunt has claimed late friend Carrie Fisher felt pressured to lose weight for the sake of her career ahead of her death aged 60.
The two struck up an unlikely friendship while he was working on his first album and he even lived with the Star Wars actress and her mother Debbie Reynolds at her home in Los Angeles.
He has previously admitted that he was with Fisher the night before she was found unresponsive on a flight from London to Los Angeles. She died days later with a toxicology report determining she had cocaine, heroin, MDMA and methadone in her system.
The You’re Beautiful hit-maker, 50, reflected on that time in his life again while performing at Hay Festival at Hay-on-Wye at the weekend.
“I was with her the day before she died, when she came down to my house,” he told the crowd. “And she’d been really mistreating her body, and she’d just got the job again of being Princess Leia in a new Star Wars movie.
“So she was really on a high and a positive, but they had applied a lot of pressure on her to be thin. She spoke about the difficulties that women have in the industry, how men are allowed to grow old, and women are certainly not in film and TV."
He added: “And she really put a lot of pressure on herself, started using drugs again and by the time she got on the plane, she had effectively killed herself.
“They say it was heart failure of some kind, but she had taken enough drugs to have a really good party.”The Standard has contacted Rian Johnson, who directed the 2017 film Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and Lucas Film for comment.
