Rod Stewart's daughter says she wanted to be her own person: ‘It’s just not cool to talk about your parents’

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Growing up, Renee Stewart didn’t want the world to know she was the daughter of rock star Rod Stewart and supermodel Rachel Hunter, who tied the knot in 1990 after a whirlwind three-month romance.

The rock star and the beauty met at a Los Angeles nightclub the night before Stewart, then 45, was planning to propose to another model, Kelly Emberg, with whom he shares a daughter. However, the musician was captivated by the 21-year-old, who made a splash as a Sports Illustrated Swimsuit pinup.

Stewart and Hunter ultimately called it quits in 2006.

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Rachel Hunter and her daughter Renee Stewart attend the Raffaello Summer Day on June 21, 2014, in Berlin, Germany. (Photo by Franziska Krug/Getty Images for Raffaello)

“It’s just not cool to talk about your parents,” Stewart, 26, told The Times on Tuesday about hiding her famous father’s identity while growing up. “When I was at school in LA if people asked me what my dad did I’d say, ‘Oh, he’s in entertainment.’”

“No disrespect to him, but you want to make your own life,” she continued. “You want to be your own person. Trading off can really screw you up and it kind of makes people cringe.”

And Stewart went on to pursue a completely different path from her celebrity parents. According to the outlet, she recently qualified as a yoga teacher after 200 hours of breathing, bending and meditating at a yoga school in northern India. She now teaches at retreats across India.

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Rod Stewart with his wife Penny Lancaster. (Reuters)

“Before yoga, I was creating this existence for myself based on fear, waiting for this or that to happen before I felt my life had begun,” she explained. “My teacher did a lot of work about the idea of living in life’s waiting room. I didn’t want to feel like that anymore. Yoga gives you control over mind and body — and that is really all you got.”

Stewart insisted that she has had no desire to follow in her parents’ famous footsteps and is perfectly content pursuing her own path. She briefly tried it, walking the runway for Dolce & Gabbana, but she hates the term “model," adding "I prefer being called ‘a creative.'"

“Oh, dad lived through an amazing time in music,” she said. “He has worked so hard. And of course, at some point, you open your mouth and wonder if a soulful rasping voice will come out. My sister Ruby was lucky. She has the voice and is in a band [the Sisterhood], but I don’t have it.”

“In terms of a music career, I actually think it might be harder to make music these days,” Stewart admitted. “I don’t think the next Rolling Stones or Naomi Campbell would stand a chance of making it now because there are literally millions of people on social media launching careers. As for my mother, she’d already moved to New York, got married and had me by the time she was 25. I am in awe of her being a mother so young.”

Still, Stewart is grateful for her unique upbringing. The Daily Mail reported Rod has eight children with five different women. He has famously called them “the fruit of my loins.”

“They were, and are still, amazing get-togethers,” said Stewart. “It’s like a tribe gathering. But of course my mom wasn’t there and neither were the other ex-wives. It was just dad and [his current wife] Penny [Lancaster]. Sometimes I’d look at all us children and think, ‘Dad has had quite a life.’”