Reynolds' passing was confirmed by her son Todd Fisher, who said: "She's now with Carrie and we're all heartbroken.

 

"She said, 'I want to be with Carrie.' And then she was gone."

 

He told the Associated Press that the stress of his sister's death "was too much" for their mother to cope with.

 

Reynolds was a renowned actress in her own right. She was thrust into the limelight when she starred alongside Gene Kelly in the 1952 classic Singin' In The Rain, which would become one of her best-known roles.

 

Her death followed a TMZ report that she had been taken to hospital after suffering a possible stroke.

 

It was claimed that she had been discussing arrangements for her daughter's funeral when she suffered a medical emergency at about 9pm Irish time on Wednesday.

 

A spokeswoman for the LA Fire Department had earlier said that a woman was escorted to hospital from an address in Beverly Hills in a "fair to serious condition", but could not confirm it was Reynolds owing to medical privacy laws.

 

Last year, Reynolds received an honorary Oscar known as the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award - but was too ill too attend the ceremony.

 

Her 60-year-old daughter Carrie, best known for her role as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, died on Tuesday - four days after she suffered a heart attack on a flight from London to Los Angeles.

 

After she died, Reynolds wrote in a Facebook post: "Thank you to everyone who has embraced the gifts and talents of my beloved and amazing daughter.

 

"I am grateful for your thoughts and prayers that are now guiding her to her next stop."

 

In November, Fisher had spoken of how she admired her mother - and told NPR radio that Reynolds had recently suffered setbacks with her health.

 

Fisher said: "(My mother is) an immensely powerful woman...There's very few women from her generation who worked like that, who just kept a career going all her life, and raised children, and had horrible relationships, and lost all her money, and got it back again.

 

"I mean, she's had an amazing life, and she's someone to admire."

 

Reynolds had been married three times - and her first marriage to Eddie Fisher, Carrie's father, ended in humiliation after he left her for fellow screen icon Elizabeth Taylor.

 

In another turn of misfortune, Reynolds' second husband gambled away most of her savings - and her third marriage to a real estate developer ended in divorce in 1996.

 

Reynolds once said in an interview that she had more luck selecting restaurants than men.

 

In an interview a few months after Elizabeth Taylor's death in 2011, Reynolds described how she had buried the hatchet with her one-time love rival when they were both passengers on the Queen Elizabeth.

 

She had told the Huffington Post: "I sent a note to her and she sent a note to me in passing, and then we had dinner together.

 

"(Elizabeth) was married to Richard Burton by then. I had been remarried at that point. And we just said, 'Let's call it a day.' And we got smashed. And we had a great evening, and stayed friends since then."

 

A documentary about her relationship with her daughter, titled Bright Lights: Starring Carrie Fisher And Debbie Reynolds, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year and is due to be broadcast on HBO in March.