Billie Lourd learned how not to parent from Carrie Fisher

Billie Lourd’s childhood with the late Carrie Fisher taught her “what not to do” as a parent.

The 29-year-old actress felt a lot of “pressure” to take care of her mom when she was growing up because the ‘Star Wars’ actress viewed her as her “main support”, so she’s keen not to do the same with 12-month-old son Kingston, who she has with fiance Austen Rydell.

Speaking on the ‘New Day’ podcast, Billie said: “My main job when [Carrie] was alive was taking care of her and making sure she was OK.

“I was her main support, and I was seven, for a lot of the time, and that was really hard and that’s why I grew up really fast because I was her best friend.

“I was her mother, I was her kid, I was her everything. And that’s one of the things I’m learning not to do with my kid.

“There’s a lot of things that my mom taught me to do and then there’s a lot that is, honestly it might be more valuable, of what not to do. And that’s one of the things that I will not do to my son is put this pressure on him that I had on me.”

Carrie and her mother, actress Debbie Reynolds, died within a day of each other in December 2016 and Billie admitted she now regrets trying to keep a professional distance from them when they were alive because the ‘American Horror Story’ star didn’t want to live in their shadow.

She said: “When they were alive, I feel like I really tried to avoid doing things in their shadow.

“We got offered all these random photoshoots … but I didn’t want to do them when they were alive, because I wanted to make sure that people knew me separately from them and now I wish I could run back and do all of those photoshoots.

“And do anything with them, really. I guess I just tried to separate myself from them more while they were alive.

“And now I feel like I’m kind of trying to do the opposite. I try to connect myself to them, because I miss them. And that’s been really difficult and sad for me.”