Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher begged Billie Lourd not to become an actress
Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher begged the latter's daughter Billie Lourd, the sole heir to their legacy, not to enter the world of showbiz.
The 24-year-old star is a bonafide star and thriving actress with her own character in Fox's hit series Scream Queens.
She counts pop stars and Hollywood household names as friends and is believed to be dating Twilight heartthrob Taylor Lautner.
Despite her family's recent pride for her professional success, Reynolds and Fisher both tried to warn her off following in their footsteps.
In a Vanity Fair interview long before the legendary mother and daughter's consecutive deaths this week, 24-year-old Lourd told how her entire family tried to put her off showbiz.
'The one thing they’d all say my whole life was: "The last thing you want to be is an actress." They wanted me to be a doctor, a C.E.O., a trashman. 'Basically anything but an actress.' In a bid to deter her gifted granddaughter from a life spent on-camera, Reynolds once tried to use her experience on the set of Singin' In The Rain as a war story.
The 84-year-old, who died from a stroke on Wednesday, invited Lourd to her home in Beverly Hills to present her with the diaries she had kept while filming the 1952 classic.
In an appearance on The Late Show with Seth Meyer, Lourd playfully recalled reading them aloud.
' Dear Debbie, you’re sitting in the makeup chair, you have no eyebrows, you’re a shell of yourself, and it’s 5 am. How did you get here?’" read one entry.
'She gets very upset when I get called Carrie Fisher's daughter. She wants me to be called Debbie Reynolds' granddaughter,' Lourd went on.
'It's very offensive to her. She started it so it's like, it's all her fault.'
Despite her initial protests, Reynolds became a 'huge fan' of the show. 'She is a huge fan. She is a huge fan of anything that involves a lot of fur.
'She misses that in film and TV so the fact that we're all clad in fur ear muffs and fur jackets, it's her dream show,' the 24-year-old explained.
Lourd's furry ear muffs on the show as an homage to her mother who, in her iconic role as Princess Leia, wore hair buns over her ears.
'They are a little bit of a Princess Leia homage. It's kind of a family tradition.
'I saw them in the fitting and was immediately gravitated towards them because I had to be,' she said.
It is not clear why both Reynolds and Fisher were so against Lourd pursuing a Hollywood career but both encountered brutal publicity and humiliation throughout theirs.
For Reynolds, the charm of being an MGM darling and one half of America's sweethearts wore off when her other half, Eddie Fisher, left her for Elizabeth Taylor.
The scandal was salacious and humiliating for Reynolds who had adored the singer. Her second and third marriages both failed too and she was taken advantage of by her husbands financially.
Fisher fought against her parents' legacy and the tall shadow it cast over her as a teenager. She descended into drug addiction, a disease she battled for much of her life, and her own romantic tribulations.
After an intense affair with Harrison Ford on the set of Star Wars, Fisher married singer Paul Simon.
She later became involved with super agent Bryan Lourd, her daughter's father who abandoned her for the man he is now married to.
Lourd is Fisher's only child and stands to inherit her entire estate.