Carrie Fisher

Jenny Craig gets plenty of credit for Carrie Fisher's weight loss - over 50 pounds in the past year - but without the psychiatric hospital Silver Hill in New Canaan, Conn., the actress says she never would have gotten her life back together.

"They really did heal me. It's the alma mater that matters," she said.

At Thursday's Silver Hill Hospital gala in N.Y.C., she extolled the virtues of the 80-year-old facility, where she was treated for alcohol addiction and bipolar disorder.

Fisher said that during her stay "there was a president at Silver Hill, I'm not kidding. He had really bad breath. I told people not to get down wind of the president."

She did not name said president, but did share some reflections on topping out at 180 pounds a year ago, and how much different she feels since that high mark.

Carrie Fisher might be ready to don a certain gold bikini once again.

The actress appeared on The Today Show and discussed her recent extreme weight loss: 50 pounds... in only nine months!

On the left, Carrie Fisher in January. On the right, Carrie Fisher in June. Notice a difference in body type?

Joking with host Ann Curry that she "exhausted the alphabet on bra sizes," Fisher said she owes her new figure to Jenny Craig for which, yes, she serves as spokeswoman.

"The Jenny Craig food is good... It tastes like you're cheating," Fisher said, adding that she "couldn't leave the house" during her heaviest times and that "I couldn't look in the mirror. I thought that was getting old."

The change is further evidenced by these Carrie Fisher weight loss photos.

[Photos: WENN.com]

She still plans to lose more weight, but actress Carrie Fisher's life has already changed for the better since she's shed 30 pounds with the help of Jenny Craig.

In the most drastic before-and-after images since the Bristol Palin plastic surgery pics (sorry, corrective jaw surgery pics), Fisher showed off a slimmer frame.

The Star Wars star, a spokeswoman for Jenny Craig, sought help last fall after tipping the scale at 180 pounds. She's already lost a good chunk of that:

"I had failed with so many diets, so losing any amount of weight seemed crazy," says Fisher, who also made headlines recently stating that John Travolta is gay.

With Jenny Craig, "I didn't have to starve or deprive myself of my favorite foods."

The weight gain got to a point where the 5-foot-1 star didn't even want to been in public because the ridicule was just too much to take. Not anymore.

"I used to feel like I had to apologize for the way I looked whenever I stepped out of the house," Fisher says. "It's a great feeling to feel like myself again, like I am worthy of compliments. I no longer want to hide in the house."

John Travolta is gay and it's no secret - just ask Carrie Fisher.

Travolta has been followed by gay rumors and reports since the late 1980s, always denying them and often enlisting a team of lawyers to take action.

But Fisher, most famous for her iconic portrayals of Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, tells The Advocate that her old friend is ... well ...

Carrie and John go way back, but is she telling it like it is?

The Advocate asks: “I know you and Travolta go way back, so let’s get really blunt here: Does his (Travolta’s) legal team have any business demanding Gawker remove a recent post suggesting that he’s given (bleep) jobs?”

Her response: “Wow! I mean, my feeling about John has always been that we know and we don’t care. Look, I’m sorry he’s uncomfortable with it, that’s all I can say. It only draws more attention to it when you make that kind of legal fuss."

This isn't her first such comment about Travolta, either.