Carrie Fisher opens up her life onstage

There are wild lives, and then there's Carrie Fisher's. A cinnamon bun-haired cinematic icon as Princess Leia of "Star Wars," she's the daughter of crooner Eddie Fisher and actress Debbie Reynolds, and one-time wife of pop folkie Paul Simon. Her second husband left her for a man.

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She's long been vocal about her battles with bipolar disorder and drug and alcohol addiction: After a yearlong depression, she says, she "had a drug slip about six months ago" and was admitted to a mental hospital.

Were that all not enough, in 2005 a friend, gay Republican Party operative R. Gregory Stevens, was found dead in Fisher's bed.

Tumultuous stuff, to be sure. But, as any Hollywood vet would tell you, it's also primo material. Starting with 1987's "Postcards From the Edge," she's published four well-received, barb-witted romans à clef.

"My life," she says, "is literally four open books."

It was only a matter of time, then, that Fisher would bring her life out from under the microscope and onto a live stage. Since 2006, she's been performing the solo show "Wishful Drinking" at regional playhouses. Starting tonight, she'll perform a one-week, stripped-down simulacrum, "A Spy in the House of Me," at Scottsdale's Theater 4301.

Like "Wishful Drinking," the adapted show will offer a time-travel trip through her life on- and off-screen, dish on her romances (Dan Aykroyd; a brief affair with Sen. Christopher Dodd; though she cut it from the original show, she might talk about a fling with Bob Dylan) and answer questions from the crowd. Nothing's taboo.

Well, mostly nothing.

"Someone once asked me who I'd rather have found dead in my bed," Fisher says. She laughs. "It's too mean."

Talking to Fisher can be an awe-inspiring trip through the seemingly strange.

This is, mind you, the woman who, for five months in 2003 put up rising British pop pianist/singer James Blunt ("You're Beautiful") in her house in Beverly Hills, Calif. She served as his informal therapist; he did some recording on the piano in her bathroom. (Wait, what? The bathroom "has really good acoustics," Fisher explains.)

Then there's the fact Fisher is chatting while taking a smoke break - in the middle of a Pilates class. Soon after, she says, she's heading to England to attend a book party for controversial novelist Salman Rushdie.

None of the above paragraph strikes Fisher as particularly absurd, and that's probably the strangest thing. After all, this is the woman who's learned to train a wry eye on just about everything that comes into view.

Or, as she says in her show: "If my life weren't funny, it would just be true. And that's unacceptable."

'Spy in the House of Me'

What: Carrie Fisher's one-woman show

When: 7:30 p.m. today through Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Sunday

Where: Theater 4301, 4301 N. Scottsdale Road, Scottsdale

Cost: $52-$56

Information: (480) 994-2787 or www.scottsdaleperformingarts.org