Paris Jackson Shares Her Father's Best Advice to Her

Michael Jackson's daughter also talks about how she felt wearing a mask

Photo: Michael Rozman/Warner Bros.

Michael Jackson‘s advice to his daughter Paris was simple: Never forget.

“He said, ‘If I die tomorrow, always remember what I told you.’ I took his advice, and I remembered everything he told me,” Paris, 13, says in a new interview when asked about the most memorable thing her father ever said to her.

The King of Pop shaped Paris’s life in all sorts of fundamental ways, including her desire to go into acting, she reveals in the interview, airing Thursday on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

“My dad was in the movie Moonwalker, and I knew he could sing really well but I didn’t know he could act. I saw that and I said, ‘Wow, I want to be just like him,’ ” says Paris, who has a role in the upcoming fantasy movie Lundon’s Bridge and the Three Keys.

“We would do improv together,” she adds. “He would give us little scenarios. He would go, ‘Okay, in this scene you’re going to cry,’ and I’d cry on the spot.”

Paris also talks about wearing a mask as a child, which she admits was a bit weird. “I’m like, ‘This is stupid, why am I wearing a mask?’ ” she says. “But I kind of realized the older I got, like, he only tried to protect us. And he’d explain that to us, too.”

Nowadays, she adds, she lives a relatively normal life. “I’m treated the same,” she says. “When I came to [her school], they didn’t know who I was. I was like, yes, I have a chance to be normal.”