Kate Beckinsale wanted her daughter to do something more "sensible" than act.
The ‘Underworld’ actress joked she and former partner Michael Sheen have "failed" because 17-year-old Lily is keen to follow in their footsteps.
Kate – whose late father Richard Beckinsale was an actor, while her mother Judy Loe is an actress – said: "We were hoping to produce something sensible like a nice doctor, but unfortunately she does want to be an actor.
"So we’ve just had to accept our failure there."
The 42-year-old actress – who split from husband Len Wiseman last year after 11 years of marriage – is proud of her "intelligent and feisty" daughter but thinks parenting a teenager is much harder than caring for a younger child.
She said: "Lily is a great, bright, intelligent, feisty girl. Although I do think it’s harder being the parent of a teenager than a baby.
"I wouldn’t have said that at the time because you think that every stage you’re in is the hardest one.
"But I do think little kids have little problems and bigger kids have bigger problems, so you spend much of your time in terror when they do things like driving – that’s scary.
"I’m quite jealous of friends whose kids aren’t doing that yet."
Kate was just 25 when she had Lily and can now see that as an "advantage" when looking at her friends.
She said: "I had my daughter relatively young – extremely young compared to most of my friends – and I’m now starting to realise the advantage of that because, for me, motherhood was a deep dive into a whole different sort of speed with everything and I just got on with it.
"The good part about Lily being older is it does free up a lot of my time. I used to put her to bed every night – she’d be appalled if I tried to do that now. She will be going to college next year, which is very exciting.
"I’ll be very sorry she won’t be in the house but, hopefully, she’ll come back."
Kate Beckinsale: I don’t want my daughter to be an actress
