Barely a day after the death of her daughter, Carrie Fisher, actress Debbie Reynolds, the star of the 1952 classic ``Singin' in the Rain,'' has died. She was 84.
"She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken," son Todd Fisher said from Cedars-Sinai Medical Cdenter, where his mother was taken by ambulance earlier Wednesday.
The stress of his sister's death "was too much" for Reynolds, he added.
"She was at Carrie's house with Todd discussing funeral arrangements for Carrie, I know this because they are my neighbours and I saw the ambulance leave," said CJAD 800 Los Angeles correspondent Ann Shatilla
"Word is now, the mother was so distraught [she may have suffered] a stroke," she added.
Fisher and Reynolds were very close and quite neighbourly, Shatilla explained.
"Over the weekend I went to the house when Carrie was still on a ventilator," Shatilla recalled. "I spoke to Debbie's caregiver Don, he told me that of course Debbie was very worried, very upset, they were an extremely close mother and daughter."
Reynolds' film career flourished in the 1960s. She starred with Glenn Ford in “The Gazebo,” Tony Curtis in “The Rat Race,” Fred Astaire in “The Pleasure of His Company,” Andy Griffith in “The Second Time Around,” with the all-star cast in “How the West Was Won” and Ricardo Montalban in “The Singing Nun.”
She also provided the voice of Charlotte the spider in the 1973 animated “Charlotte's Web.”
In her later years, Reynolds continued performing her show, travelling 40 weeks a year. She also appeared regularly on television, appearing as John Goodman's mother on “Roseanne” and a mom on “Will & Grace.” Her books included the memoirs “Unsinkable” and “Make 'Em Laugh.”
In 1996 she won critical acclaim in the title role of Albert Brooks' movie “Mother,” in which Brooks played a struggling writer who moves back home and works on his strained relationship with Reynolds' character. A few years earlier, she had wanted to play the mother in the film adaptation of Fisher's bittersweet autobiographical novel “Postcards From the Edge,” which featured mother-daughter actresses. Director Mike Nichols cast Shirley MacLaine instead.
Reynolds and Fisher were featured together in the HBO documentary “Bright Lights,” scheduled for release in 2017.
—with files from Richard Deschamps and The Associated Press writer Lynn Elber in Los Angeles.