At age 16, Jamie Lynn Spears was at the height of success and fame. The former child star revealed the moment that seemed like a crossroads in her life to Nylon. She had just finished filming the last season of Nickelodeon's Zoey 101. Her manager was looking for her next project. He sent her to a casting for a new, supernatural, indie, teen-romance. She was sitting in the waiting area thinking about how stupid it was. The actress felt sick and she didn't want to be cast as a vampire. Jamie really didn't want to be there in that room.
It turns out the movie she was trying out for would become a global blockbuster--Twilight, but she didn't appear in it. Kristen Stewart ended up bagging the lead role, but Jamie thinks she remembers seeing Lily Collins at the casting as well. Britney Spears's little sister was in a room with a cohort of young actresses who would become household names in the next ten years. That is the moment when her life could have played out very differently, but she took an alternative path.
The teen actress was feeling ill at the try out because she was already pregnant with her first daughter, Maddie. She just didn't know it yet.
“You have your first love, or what you call love in high school. You think it's forever, and then, oh my gosh, I'm pregnant. I am mortified to have to tell my parents this and my family this. I do not care what TMZ thinks about it,” she explained in the interview with Nylon.
“That was all I was thinking about: ‘These are the people I love that I have to tell, and also, I'm pregnant. There's a human being growing inside of me, and I'm so young, I'm almost a baby myself.’”
Jamie decided to leave the public eye for five years while she cared for her daughter Maddie. She began writing country songs for other musicians. Her work was behind the scenes. Then, just a few months after her wedding, she released her own album. In the time since, she's starred in Netflix's Sweet Magnolias and is working on a reboot of Zoey 101.
Her daughter Maddie is 12 years old, now, and Jamie is 29. She has a second daughter, Ivey, 2, with her husband Jamie Watson. Her acting and music careers are on course again. She's getting used to being in the public eye as well. Most importantly, Jamie glows in photos and looks incredibly happy with her beautiful family.
Sources: Nylon