'Star Wars' Actress Billie Lourd on Princess Leia Rumors and Her Famous Family
By Matt Donnelly
Billie Lourd, offspring of actress Carrie Fisher and CAA co-chairman Bryan Lourd, is ready for her closeup.
The 22-year-old is joining the family business with an acting career of her own, starting with a slew of upcoming projects like J.J. Abrams‘ Star Wars: The Force Awakens and Fox’s much-anticipated horror-comedy series Scream Queens.
“It’s been a secret dream of mine,” Lourd said in her first-ever editorial feature, which appears in Interview magazine’s Youth Wave issue featuring up-and-comers like Alicia Vikander and Domhnall Gleeson.
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Her parents discouraged her from an on-camera career, she admitted. “My whole life, they said, ‘Do not act. You need to get a college degree,'” she said. “I went to performing arts camp, secretly taking classes — I got the lead in the musical, and my dad was like, ‘Wait, I thought you were going here for music and knitting.'”
Lourd earned a degree from NYU last year, but pursued her secret dream nonetheless — landing a part in the very franchise that made her mother a star decades ago.
“This is the first job I’ve ever had — right into the fire,” Lourd told Interview of the top-secret Star Wars project. While she declined to share details about her character, she was quick to shoot down rumors linking her to Fisher’s iconic Princess Leia, who will also return in the new film.
“I’m not Princess Leia’s daughter,” she said.
Related: 'Scream Queens’ to Premiere at San Diego Comic Con 2015
Lourd is currently in production on Ryan Murphy’s Scream Queens, about a pack hellish sorority girls who fall victim to a string of campus murders. She co-stars with Emma Roberts, Lea Michele,Abigail Breslin and Nick Jonas.
“It’s scary,” Lourd said of the series, “but there’s a lot of comedic breaks.”
Scream Queens premieres this fall on Fox. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, starring Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong’o, Adam Driver, Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Andy Serkis, opens Christmas Day.
