Mark Hamill "regrets" not spending more time with Billie Lourd when she was a child.

Mark Hamill

Mark Hamill

The 66-year-old actor considers Billie - who is the daughter of the late Carrie Fisher, who passed away at the age of 60 last December - to be his "niece" despite not being related by blood, and has revealed he would have liked to have bonded more with her when she was younger.

Speaking about Billie - who starred alongside Mark and her mother in 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' as Lieutenant Connix and will reprise her role in upcoming movie 'The Last Jedi' - Mark said: "With Billie Lourd being in 'The Force Awakens', she's more prominent in this film, and I kind of regret ... I mean the first time I met Billie she was six or seven so I missed that whole [part of her life]. I feel badly that I wasn't there for my 'niece'. And you know, she's wonderful in her own right."

And Mark can't help but notice the resemblance between Billie and her mother - who starred as Princess Leia alongside Mark's Luke Skywalker in the popular sci-fi franchise - as well as her late grandmother Debbie Reynolds, who passed away one day after Carrie.

Speaking to E! News, Mark said: "There's so much of Carrie in her. And so much of Debbie Reynolds in her, which you know, that's fire and ice right there. Back in the day I hung with Carrie in Debbie's apartment in Manhattan when she was doing theatre, and I was also at her Malibu place, Carrie and I were inseparable after the movie for a period of time.

"But to see Debbie and Carrie together ... Debbie was optimistic and bright and bouncy, and Carrie was shuffling around and down and dark. It was like 'Who's the mother in this situation?'

"So I thought of Billie as a real sort of anchor in Carrie's life."

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