Daughter of the late King of Pop continues his legacy in music. Paris Jackson opened up about her childhood and how her father, Michael Jackson instilled good work ethics that affect her upbringing.
“Growing up, it was about earning stuff. If we wanted five toys from FAO Schwarz or Toys R Us, we had to read five books,” she said. “It’s earning it, not just being entitled to certain things or thinking, ‘Oh, I got this.’ It’s like working for it, working hard for it — it’s, it’s something else entirely. It’s an accomplishment.”
The 24-year-old shared that ‘the one that is my guiding principle is that you never stop learning’.
“I graduated, and that doesn’t mean that I stopped learning,” she added. “And my father also would say something along the lines of, ‘The minute that you stop learning is the minute that you’re going to start dying.”
The 22-year old named after the city she was conceived in but was born in Los Angeles. However, Paris remembers growing up everywhere due to her father’s work as an artist.
“It was also like, we saw everything. We saw third-world countries. We saw every part of the spectrum,” Jackson said. She explained that Michael made sure that his children grew up aware of the different aspects of life and not just blindly enjoying the glitz and glam of celebrity life.
When Michael Jackson passed away in June 2009, Paris was only 11 years old and the world mourned with her. But she is happy to be able to continue his legacy.
Even when supermodel Naomi Campbell suggested Paris was too famous to show up for model castings, she insisted that she is fully believed to ‘earn anything in life’.
“I need to … I go to auditions, I work hard, I study scripts, I do my thing,” she added.
Earlier this month, she starred in Stella McCartney’s ad campaign for her new collection, featuring eco-conscious vegan-leather pieces. She also released her debut album, “Wilted,” in November. Following her family into the music industry, Paris credits her father’s music and his wide range of musical interests with guiding her own taste and sound.
“He loved classical music and jazz. And hip-hop and R&B, and obviously the Motown stuff,” she said. “But also like radio’s Top 40, and he loved rock music, soft rock, The Beatles. So we grew up around all of that, and I feel like all of that somehow influences my stuff, and if you listen to my album, even there are some movie soundtrack-like influences as well, like Hans Zimmer and Danny Elfman, as well as like rock bands like Radiohead and Manchester Orchestra.”
Source: NYPost