Hilary Duff has revealed that she worked hard to break free from her image as Lizzie McGuire, as she wanted to “be my own person.”
Duff admitted in an interview on the “Good Guys” podcast Monday that she “really didn’t want to be Lizzie McGuire anymore” after working on the “Lizzie McGuire” TV series for three years as a teenager.
“For so long people were just like ‘Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie,'” the 35-year-old actress said. “And still, now to this day, which it doesn’t bother me anymore but it did for a while, I just desperately needed to be my own person.”
She continued, “I think that I thought music was gonna be a good way to introduce myself, reintroduce myself, and it was.”
Duff portrayed a 13-year-old teenage girl in the popular TV show from 2001 to 2004. The show also featured Adam Lamberg, Lalaine, Jake Thomas, Hallie Todd, Ashlie Brillault and Robert Carradine.
The series’ success led to the creation of “The Lizzie McGuire Movie,” which came out in 2003.
The actress announced the reboot of the popular sitcom in November 2019 and shot two episodes.
However, she revealed in February 2020 that the show was canceled after Disney+ denied Duff’s request to move the show to Hulu which does not require a PG rating unlike the former.
“I think there are a few levels to that,” she told The Cut last year about the importance of showing Lizzie McGuire’s adult version. “One is that it took a long time for me to love Lizzie again. I would say probably from 20 to 30 I was just like, ‘I don’t want to be called Lizzie. I don’t want to be associated with that.’ It was just frustrating, I felt stuck.”
Considering Duff’s music career, she dropped her first studio album, “Santa Claus Lane,” in 2002 and went on to release many more throughout the years including “This Heart” in 2014 and “Breathe In. Breathe Out.” in 2015.
Duff is currently busy working on the TV series “How I Met Your Father,” which premiered on Hulu in January 2022. She portrays Sophie in the show.
Getty Images/Jamie McCarthy
