Jamie Lynn Spears says paparazzi’s ‘scrutiny’ of sister Britney convinced her to leave the industry

‘I needed to get away and grow up’

Jamie Lynn Spears says watching her sister Britney being scrutinised by paparazzi convinced her to leave the entertainment industry.

The younger Spears, now 29, made her film debut aged 10 in Crossroads, the 2002 road comedy also starring Britney Spears.

She had more TV credits in the 2000s, in shows such as All That and Zoey 101.

But Jamie Lynn decided to step back from the public eye when she realised that a lack of privacy could impact her negatively.

She told Maria Menounos on the host’s Better Together podcast that this understanding came around the time she became pregnant with her first child at age 16.

“When I became pregnant with Maddie, I bought a house in Mississippi, I put a big old fence around it, and I was like, ‘I don’t want anything in this little word. I’ve got to grow up, number one, I’m trying to figure out how to be a mom,’” Jamie Lynn said.

“And I didn’t want to create that lifestyle and I knew staying in Hollywood – the circus that would have been around me as a young teen mom, it would have been the best show for the media ever.”

Despite her precautions, Jamie Lynn said photographers still managed to track her down.

“What was crazy is they still were there. The paparazzi followed me around this small town, and it felt like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m never going to be able to get away from this,’” she added.

“Thankfully, just staying away long enough, everything was able to die down. I just think that was my time of saying, ‘I don’t think that I can grow up properly this way.’

“I needed to get away and grow up. Because you can’t expect yourself not to make mistakes, and with the kind of scrutiny that I had seen with my sister, I don’t think I can do that in front of the whole world.”

Jamie Lynn has since made new forays into show business. In 2014, she released an EP titled The Journey.

She also has a role in the upcoming series Sweet Magnolias, which will air on Netflix on 19 May.