Billie Lourd stood in for Carrie Fisher during The Rise of Skywalker flashback scene

Billie Lourd stood in for her late mother Carrie Fisher to shoot an emotional scene as iconic character Princess Leia in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

The 27-year-old tragically lost both Carrie and her grandmother Debbie Reynolds over the Christmas period in 2016, but was able to honour the memory of her beloved mum while appearing in the movie, in which she portrays Resistance member Lieutenant Connix.

According to visual effects supervisor Patrick Tubach, director J.J. Abrams asked Billie for her help in completing scenes featuring Carrie, which were cut together using footage from previous films, including 2015's The Force Awakens.

"Billie was playing her mother," Tubach revealed to Yahoo! "It was a poignant thing, and something that nobody took lightly - that she was willing to stand in for her mom."

Earlier film footage of Carrie was used to digitally replace her daughter's face in the additional scenes.

"It was an emotional thing for everybody to see her in that position," he added. "It felt great for us, too. If you're going to have someone play (Carrie's) part, it's great that it's (Billie) because there are a lot of similarities between them that we were able to draw from. The real challenge was just making the Leia footage we had to work with fit in that scene."

Carrie suffered a cardiac arrest on a flight from London to Los Angeles and passed away in hospital days later on 27 December 2016, at the age of 60. Her mother, Debbie, sadly died the following day, aged 84.