How Dan Aykroyd saved Carrie Fisher’s life
Few relationships within the ever-twisting world of entertainment seem to transcend the boundaries of romance and friendship, those two very special feelings that so often intertwine with one another. One of the most significant has to be the beautiful shared experience of the heart and mind between Carrie Fisher and Dan Aykroyd.
The pair had first met on the set of Saturday Night Live back in 1975, where Aykroyd had been performing, and Fisher turned up one night in a guest appearance. However, it wasn’t until some years later on The Blue Brothers in 1980 that their initial meeting blossomed into something deeper and more romantic.
The two found in one another a kindred sense of humour and lust for life, as well as a knowledge of the strange world of entertainment. Shortly after Blues Brothers, Aykroyd and Fisher got engaged, and their unconventional public personalities made them one of Hollywood’s most enigmatic and charismatic couples.
Like some of the best romances, there seemed to be an element of fate between Fisher and Aykroyd, as the Saturday Night Live star once saved the life of the Star Wars icon. In an interview with the Chicago Tribute in 2008, Fisher explained how at the moment Aykroyd proposed to her, she very nearly came close to dying were it not for her new fiance’s quick thinking.
“He proposed in the trailer on set,” Fisher noted. “He thought I was laughing, and then he saw that I was dying, and he did the Heimlich manoeuvre, and then like 10 minutes later, he asked me to marry him, and I thought, ‘I better marry him. What if that happens again?’… But then I got back together with Paul Simon.”
Eventually, as Fisher notes, her relationship with Aykroyd never quite worked out as the pressure of fame took its toll on their respective personal lives. However, the two remain close friends, and Aykroyd was always on hand to offer his love and support when Fisher’s well-documented mental health and addiction issues became too much to bear.
When Fisher died of cardiac arrest back in 2016, Aykroyd penned a touching tribute to his former lover, noting with his typical humour, “One of the most brilliant and hilarious minds of our aeon, Carrie would say things like: ‘I love tiny babies. When they cry, they turn red and look like screaming tomatoes. Carrie embraced my friends, and I was embraced in warmly human and Hollywood-glamorous emotional comfort, elegance and excitement.”
