Carrie Fisher's mother Debbie Reynolds has died one day after her daughter

Celebrity site TMZ is reporting actress Debbie Reynolds has died as the result of a suspected stroke. She was 84.

The Hollywood star was rushed to hospital on Thursday morning, NZ time.  

Reynolds is the mother of actress Carrie Fisher, who died on Tuesday, local time.

Variety magazine says son Todd Fisher told them, "She wanted to be with Carrie." 

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TMZ says Reynolds was at the home of her son, Todd Fisher, when paramedics were called to the property on Wednesday morning, local time. She had been at Fisher's home discussing funeral plans for Carrie. 

Los Angeles Fire Department spokeswoman Margaret Stewart told reporters at the scene paramedics transported a woman from a home in her son's Coldwater Canyon neighbourhood in fair to serious condition.

She could not confirm it was Reynolds, citing medical privacy laws.

Reynolds starred opposite Gene Kelly in the 1952 classic Singin' in the Rain, and was nominated for an Oscar for her role in the musical The Unsinkable Molly Brown. She was also nominated for a Tony Award in 1973 for her performance in the Broadway musical Irene.

Reynolds has been a fixture on stage, screen and record for almost 70 years. She made her screen debut in 1948 and her debut as a recording artist in the early 1950s, with the soundtrack albums of Two Weeks With Love (1950) and Singin' in the Rain (1952).

In 1955, she married the singer Eddie Fisher, with whom she had two children, Carrie (born 1956) and Todd (1958). They divorced in 1959, when Reynolds discovered her husband had been having an affair with her good friend, actress Elizabeth Taylor. She married twice more, and was twice more divorced.

Last year she confessed to the Express news group in the UK that she had never been very interested in sex, and blamed that for her failed marriages.

But, she added: "I have very poor taste in men and I married all the wrong men. I've never found the right man and never hope to at this age. I think that it's too late. That boat has sailed."

Reynolds was just 17 when she was cast in Singin' in the Rain, with no dance experience to speak of. She learnt on the job, often to the frustration of leading man Gene Kelly. But she applied herself, and developed a long-running career as a genuine triple threat – someone capable of acting, singing and dancing with equal aplomb.

Indeed, she arguably became most famous through the fictional character Doris Mann, played by Shirley MacLaine in the 1990 film Postcards From the Edge. Like the semi-autobiographical book on which it was based, the film about the relationship between a drug-addicted actress and her narcissistic, alcoholic former star mother was written by Carrie Fisher.

Speaking to Larry King on CNN just before the film's release in 1990, Reynolds said "Everyone thinks it's about me, but it's not. Carrie wrote a novel". Even so, Reynolds could see herself in the role, in more ways than one. As she confessed in her 2013 autobiography Unsinkable, she wanted to play Doris. But when she asked director Mike Nichols to let her audition, he told her: "You're not right for the part."

Though she was nominated for an Academy Award as best actress in 1965 for The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and received the honorary Jean Hersholt humanitarian award at the Oscars 50 years later (in recognition for her work with various charities, and her efforts to establish a Hollywood museum, which came to nought when she was forced to sell her collection in 2009 after her foundation was declared bankrupt), in recent decades she became best known to a younger generation as the mother of Carrie Fisher.

Carrie Fisher, who starred as Princess Leia in the original Star Wars trilogy, died Tuesday at age 60, days after suffering a medical emergency on a flight from London to Los Angeles.

Reynolds was reportedly devastated by her daughter's death, which came just a day after she announced to the media that Carrie was in a "stable" condition. But it is unlikely anything but serious illness could keep her away from the stage for too long.

In a November interview with for the NPR show Fresh Air, Carrie Fisher spoke of her admiration for her mother, who she said had some recent health setbacks.

"She's an immensely powerful woman, and I just admire my mother very much," Carrie Fisher said. "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."

 - Stuff with wires, Sydney Morning Herald