`Star Wars` actress Carrie Fisher suffers mid-air heart attack

California: Hollywood star Carrie Fisher was fighting for her life Friday after suffering a massive heart attack on an airplane, according to media reports which described her condition as "critical."

Celebrity website TMZ reported that the 60-year-old "Star Wars" actress was flying from London to Los Angeles when she suffered cardiac arrest, and was given cardiopulmonary resuscitation by an emergency services worker on board. 

Fisher collapsed 15 minutes before the plane landed at LAX, TMZ said citing unnamed sources, and was rushed to a nearby hospital.

The Los Angeles Times said her condition was "critical," quoting an unnamed source who said the actress was "in a lot of distress on the flight."

The American actress has talked and written frequently about her years of drug addiction and mental illness.

She was catapulted to worldwide stardom as the rebel warrior Princess Leia in the original "Star Wars" trilogy, which has been a cultural phenomenon since the release of the films from 1977 to 1983. 

Steeped in Hollywood excess from an early age, she was the product of the four-year marriage of movie star Debbie Reynolds, best-known for her role in "Singin` In The Rain," and singer Eddie Fisher.

The relationship, and the happy home in Beverly Hills, came to an end when Fisher left Reynolds for her close friend, the actress Elizabeth Taylor.

Fisher is also known for her searingly honest semi-autobiographical novels, including her best-selling debut "Postcards from the Edge" which she turned into a film of the same name in 1990. 

She has given various interviews over the years about her diagnosis of bipolar disorder and addiction to prescription drugs and cocaine, which she admitted using on the set of "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980).

She has also discussed being treated with electroconvulsive therapy, in which small electric currents are passed through the brain, to trigger brief seizures.