Mark Hamill Talks ''Regret'' of Not Knowing Billie Lourd as a Child: ''I Wasn't There for My Niece''

Star Wars actor discusses how similar Carrie Fisher's daughter is to her late mother and memories of his late friend

By Cydney Contreras Dec 06, 2017 11:55 PMTags
Watch: Mark Hamill Gushes Over Billie Lourd in "The Last Jedi"

Mark Hamill could not help but gush about his "niece" Billie Lourd, and just how much the starlet reminds him of his late friend and her mother, Carrie Fisher.

"She is wonderful in her own right," he told E! News in a sit-down interview.

Despite meeting the Scream Queens star when she was just a young girl, he lost touch with Fisher for a time and the Star Wars actor feels that he finally got to know Billie when she starred alongside him and her mother as Lieutenant Connix in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Hamill expressed his regret about the time when he and Fisher were not in contact, saying, "I feel badly that I wasn't there for my niece."

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Luckily, with Billie's character playing a more prominent role in the Last Jedi film, he has been able to reconnect with her and, in doing so, has realized just how similar the actress is to her mother and grandmother, Debbie Reynolds.

"There is so much of Carrie in her and so much of Debbie Reynolds in her," he said.

Hamill reminisced about the times when he and Fisher were inseparable, and he would spend time with her and her mother in Malibu and New York. It was during these moments together that he was able to observe how "bright and bouncy" Reynolds seemed in comparison to her "dark and down" daughter. He joked that her mother and grandmother were like "fire and ice," but that the introduction of Billie to the family provided an "anchor in Carrie's life."

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In addition to singing his praises about Lourd's personality, he praised her professionally, applauding her performances in Scream Queens and American Horror Story: Cult the way any proud family member would.

The star also took the opportunity to apologize to Lourd for his "cheap joke" about her being like her mother, saying, "I have been making this terrible joke about how they said, ‘She is so much like Carrie,' and I said, ‘Yeah she is late all the time.'"

He clarified that she is in fact "very professional."

Star Wars: The Last Jedi premieres nationwide in theaters on December 15.

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