Tessa Gourin keeps talking about her background and what she claims it was like to grow up as Jack Nicholson’s estranged daughter.

The 28-year-old New York-based actress recently spoke with The Daily Beast about her life and the lessons she has taken away from it.

She claimed that her mother, Jennine Gourin, has been telling her ‘not to tell anyone that I have this famous dad’ since she was a young child.

She remarked, ’I sort of related my existence to being like Orphan Annie’s since I knew he was strong and his money was on par with that of Daddy Warbucks.’

Gourin told the journal that when she was a child, Nicholson ‘wasn’t interested” in getting to know her.’

Gourin was described as Nicholson’s ‘spitting image’ in the article. The specifics of the arrangement

were not discussed by Gourin, however she did say that her father had paid for her early education.

When you’re a child, you don’t get to choose where you go, so if your mother is pressuring you to visit someone

who is technically your father and he agrees to see you for anywhere from an hour to a few days, that’s

where you’re going to go, Gourin said. I’ll just say that my knowledge of this person is at best limited.

Gourin has never been identified as being the daughter of Nicholson, who is also the father of five other children.

Gourin said to The Daily Beast that she has always been interested in acting and that, as a young girl, she also enjoyed performing during sleepovers and wanted to be videotaped.

She remarked, ‘My mother wouldn’t let me act when I was younger, and while I can understand that, I’m like, ‘F—-, I would have nailed it.’’

One month earlier, Gourin wrote a piece for Newsweek in which she claimed to have “sat on the sidelines

and watched in rage as other celebrity kids have easily landed gigs or been signed to huge agencies.’

She discussed some more points in her interview with The Daily Beast regarding the ’nepo baby’ controversy as well as other performers who have refuted claims that they have benefited from nepotism.

It’s a double-edged sword, Gourin added, since I can understand the frustration of having to push open the

door before being told, ‘Alright, now show us what you can accomplish. Yet, it’s the element that thrills me the most as an actor.

A strong motivation is the drive to prove one’s value. You should just deal with this sense of humiliation on your own and use it into your work once you’ve developed a gift.

Her lifelong passion was acting, but according to Gourin, she gave it up in her mid-20s for fear of being

blacklisted because of her marriage to Jack Nicholson. She was unable to pursue an acting career due to this fear.

She continued, ‘How can you use it to your advantage when this person does not want me to be a part of his life?

I was afraid people would think I was tacky or that I was riding on his coattails.’ Gourin claimed to have admiration for Nicholson as an actress.

I really want this to get across: If I were to criticize anything about his acting, that wouldn’t

make me an artist, because creating art and being the world’s best dad are two whole different things, she added.