Early life and career

Duff was born in Houston, Texas on September 28, 1987. She is the second child of Susan Colleen (née Cobb), a homemaker and film producer, and husband Robert Erhard Duff, a partner in a chain of convenience stores, who resides at the family home in Houston to maintain the family's convenience store business. She has an elder sister, Haylie Duff, who is also an actress/singer. Duff's mother encouraged Hilary to take up acting classes alongside her elder sister, Haylie, which resulted in both girls winning roles in various local theater productions. At the ages of eight and six, respectively, the Duff sisters participated in the ballet, The Nutcracker Suite with Columbus BalletMet in San Antonio. The siblings became more enthusiastic about the idea of choosing acting as a profession, and eventually relocated to California with their mother. Duff's father stayed at the family home in Houston to take care of their business. After several years of auditions and meetings, the Duff sisters were cast in various television commercials.

Career

Early work

Duff's early career was marked by playing minor roles, starting off with an uncredited appearance in Hallmark Entertainment's western miniseries True Women in 1997. She also served as an uncredited extra, in writer-director Willard Carroll's ensemble dramedy Playing by Heart in 1998. Her first major role was as a star of the 1998 film Casper Meets Wendy, a direct-to-video sequel to Casper in which she plays the young witch Wendy, who encounters the animated character Casper. The film was released to mostly unenthusiastic reviews.

In 1999, Duff appeared in a supporting role in the television film The Soul Collector, which was, based on a Kathleen Kane novel and starred Bruce Greenwood and Melissa Gilbert. Duff won a Young Artist Award for "Best Performance in a TV Movie or Pilot (Supporting Young Actress)" for her role in the movie.

Duff's first serious shot at fame came when she was cast as one of the children in the pilot episode of the NBC sitcom Daddio in 2000. Actor Michael Chiklis, co-star of Daddio, stated, "After working with her the first day, I remember saying to my wife, 'this young girl is going to be a movie star'. She was completely at ease with herself and comfortable in her own skin."

Duff was dropped from the cast of Daddio before it being aired, which made her reluctant to pursue her acting career further. However, her manager and mother urged her on, and a week later she successfully auditioned for a children's television series, Lizzie McGuire. In the series, Duff portrayed the title role of Lizzie McGuire, a clumsy but an average middle school girl. The show focused on her life and her slow growth into teenhood. Her co-stars included Lalaine, Adam Lamberg, Jake Thomas, Clayton Snyder, Ashlie Brillault, Robert Carradine, and Hallie Todd.

2001-2003

Lizzie McGuire, which first aired on the Disney Channel on January 12, 2001, was a ratings hit, drawing in 2.3 million viewers per episode. Her participation in the show led to her becoming highly popular among children between the ages of seven and fourteen,with critic Richard Huff of the New York Daily News calling her "a 2002 version of Annette Funicello". After Duff fulfilled her 65 episode contract with Lizzie McGuire, Disney considered continuing the franchise further, through films and a prime-time television series to be broadcast on ABC. However, the plans failed to take off because Duff's representatives claimed she was not being paid enough for the proposed series. In 2003, she went on to reprise her role as Lizzie McGuire in the feature film spin-off, The Lizzie McGuire Movie. During her time on Lizzie McGuire, Duff starred opposite Christy Carlson Romano and Gary Cole in the Disney Channel television film Cadet Kelly (2002), which became the network's most watched program in its 19-year history. In the movie, she plays a free-spirited girl who enrolls in a military school and finds it hard to adjust to its strict and disciplined environment.

Duff's first role in a theatrical motion picture was in Human Nature (2002), an independent film shot before her stint in Lizzie McGuire. It was first showcased at the Cannes and Sundance film festivals. The film, written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry, follows a female naturalist, played by Patricia Arquette. Duff played the younger version of Arquette's character. The same year, Duff recorded a cover version of Brooke McClymont's "I Can't Wait" for the Lizzie McGuire soundtrack, and "The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room" for the first DisneyMania compilation album. Her first album was Santa Claus Lane (2002), a collection of Christmas songs that included duets with her sister Haylie, Lil' Romeo and Christina Milian. Accompanied by the Disney Channel-only single "Tell Me a Story (About the Night Before)", it peaked at 154 on the U.S. Billboard 200 album chart and was certified gold. The track "Santa Claus Lane" was included on the soundtrack to The Santa Clause 2 and the single, "What Christmas Should Be", was used in Cheaper by the Dozen. Duff sang several tracks for soundtrack to The Lizzie McGuire Movie, which included "I Can't Wait" and "Why Not", the latter peaking at number fourteen in Australia. The soundtrack to The Lizzie McGuire movie went platinum in 2003.

In 2003, Duff got her first major role in a feature film when she was cast alongside Frankie Muniz in Agent Cody Banks. The film received positive reviews and was successful enough to spawn a sequel, in which Duff did not participate. The same year, Duff reprised her role as Lizzie McGuire for The Lizzie McGuire Movie, which exceeded box office expectations, earning $42.6 million at the US box office and $55 million worldwide. It received mixed reviews, with certain critics calling it "an unabashed promotion of Duff’s image, just as Crossroads was for Spears", while other reviews were generally positive and encouraging. Later that year, Duff played one of the 12 children of Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt in the family film Cheaper by the Dozen, which remains her highest grossing film to date. She reprised her role in the sequel to the film called Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005), which failed to be as successful as the original film and was panned by critics.

Duff's second album and first studio album, Metamorphosis (2003), reached number one on the U.S. and Canadian charts and had sold over 3.7 million copies by May 2005. The lead single, "So Yesterday" (co-written and produced by The Matrix), was a top ten hit in several countries,its follow-up, the Laguna Beach theme song "Come Clean", became Duff's first top forty U.S. hit and reached the top twenty in UK, Australia and New Zealand. The third single, "Little Voice", was not released in the U.S. and was a minor hit in Canada and Australia. In late 2003, Duff embarked on her first concert tour, the Metamorphosis Tour, and later the Most Wanted Tour. Most shows scheduled in the major cities were completely sold out.

Duff also made several guest appearances in television shows; her first as a sick child in the medical drama Chicago Hope in March 2000.In a 2003 episode of George Lopez, she had a role as a makeup salesperson; she later reappeared in the show in 2005 as Kenzie, a feminist poet friend of the character, Carmen (Masiela Lusha). In 2003, she acted opposite her sister Haylie in American Dreams, while in 2005, she played a classmate and idolizer of the title character of Joan of Arcadia.

2004-2006

In January 2004, the second DisneyMania disc, DisneyMania 2, was released and featured a duet, "The Siamese Cat Song" with her sister. Another song, "Circle of Life", featured Duff and other Disney Channel stars. Duff and her sister recorded a cover of The Go-Gos' "Our Lips Are Sealed" for the soundtrack to A Cinderella Story, which also included two other songs by Duff. The video for "Our Lips Are Sealed" was popular on MTV's Total Request Live, but the song failed to chart on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100.

Duff's third album was the self-titled Hilary Duff in which she co-wrote some songs. She described the album as more "personal" and having a "rock feel" than Metamorphosis. It was released on her seventeenth birthday (in September 2004) and debuted at number two in the U.S. and at number one in Canada. The album sold over 1.5 million copies in the U.S. in eight months, but its only U.S. single, "Fly", failed to chart on the Hot 100. "Fly" reached the top forty in Australia, where the album produced a second top forty single, "Someone's Watching over Me",which was the theme song of the film Raise Your Voice. Duff contributed the song "(I'll Give) Anything but Up!" for the 2004 album Marlo Thomas & Friends: Thanks & Giving All Year Long (2004).

In 2004, Duff starred in the romantic comedy A Cinderella Story. Though the reviews were mostly negative, the film went on to become a moderate box office hit, and critics were impressed by Duff's performance. A Cinderella Story earned $70,067,909 worldwide and was a commercial success. Later that year, she starred in the film Raise Your Voice, her first role in a drama film. While some critics praised Duff for appearing in a more mature and serious role than her previous films, the film itself was heavily panned, with the Las Vegas Weekly writing: "Effortlessly combining Duff's bad acting and bad singing with bad writing and bad direction, Raise Your Voice is an insulting waste of time that begs to be silenced."Several reviews were indifferent towards her acting performance and were particularly harsh towards Duff's vocals, with critics pointing out what appeared to be her digitally enhanced voice. The film received a lukewarm response at the box office, and is Duff's least successful film commercially, with total theater receipts of $14,867,514.The same year, Duff received her first Razzie nomination for worst actress for her roles in Raise Your Voice and A Cinderella Story.

Duff at the red carpet at the 2007 MuchMusic Video Awards.

In 2005, Duff starred in The Perfect Man in which she played the eldest daughter of a divorced woman (Heather Locklear). The film received mostly harsh reviews and did not live up to box office expectations, grossing $19,770,475 globally.In the same year, Duff was again nominated for a Razzie Award, for The Perfect Man and Cheaper by the Dozen 2.The 2006 satirical comedy Material Girls, in which she co-starred with her sister Haylie, was also not well received by critics, grossing only $16,907,561 worldwide. The film, directed by Martha Coolidge and co-produced by Madonna's independent film production company Maverick Entertainment, starred the Duff sisters as wealthy siblings who must fight to reclaim their fortune following a scandal. Duff along with her sister Haylie, received two more nominations for Razzie awards for their role in the film.

Duff's fourth album, Most Wanted (2005), comprised her favorite tracks from her previous two albums, remixes, and new songs inspired by pop-rock musicians such as The Killers and Muse. In an appearance on Total Request Live, Duff stated that it was not a greatest hits album, but that her label told her it was time to release a new album. She had more creative control over Most Wanted compared to her previous releases, co-writing the new material with producers Joel Madden and his brother, Benji, both members of Good Charlotte. The lead single, "Wake Up", became Duff's highest peaking single on the U.S. Hot 100 at the time,and its video received heavy rotation on MTV. The video for the second single, "Beat of My Heart", was also popular, but the single itself did not chart in the U.S.The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and became her third number one debut in Canada. An Italy-only compilation, 4Ever, was released in 2006. Duff recorded new songs for her movie, Material Girls, which included a Timbaland-produced cover version of Madonna's "Material Girl" with her sister.

By 2005, Duff appeared to have lost weight, leading the media to speculate that she had developed an eating disorder, though Duff denied this claim. Duff was interviewed on the Australian current affair show Today Tonight and stated that she lost weight by leading a more active lifestyle. Later in 2006, an article on Digital Spy stated that Duff had slimmed down to a U.S. size zero because of media reports suggesting she had gained fifteen pounds. She later stated that she had been feeling the pressure to be thin, because she is perceived in the media to be either too fat or too thin. Duff called this "judgmental" and "mean".

In June 2006, when asked about her then-boyfriend Joel Madden, a native of Waldorf, Maryland, in an interview with Elle, Duff replied, "He's very real, like, he's from a pretty ghetto place in Maryland... I like that". Duff's "ghetto" comments sparked a mixture of mild offense and bemusement from residents of the Waldorf area, as the suburban, mostly middle-class town did not fall into the traditional impoverished inner city concept of a ghetto. Duff later claimed she was referring not to Waldorf, but actually a section of Baltimore where Madden lived briefly as a young adult.

In late 2006, Duff took legal action against an alleged stalker and his roommate. On November 3, 2006, Duff's stalker, Maksim Miakovsky, was arrested for threatening to kill her. He was booked on charges of making criminal threats and stalking. According to legal papers filed by Duff, Miakovsky came to the U.S. "for the sole purpose of meeting and becoming romantically involved with Ms. Duff". Miakovsky was being held on $200,000 bail at the Manhattan Beach jail. He was arraigned on November 7, 2006. On January 19, 2007, Miakovsky was sentenced to 117 days in jail and five years probation after pleading no contest to the charges.

2007-present

During her Most Wanted tour, she performed in Guadalajara, Mexico, where she filmed a brief appearance on the soap opera Rebelde. She was also the guest star on The Andy Milonakis Show for its third season premiere in 2007. In April 2008, Duff was offered the lead role of Annie Mills in the CW Network's Beverly Hills, 90210 spinoff, but she turned it down because she was more interested in looking for projects outside the teen genre. She is also a model signed to IMG Models New York.^[

Hilary Duff performing in Toronto on MuchMusic in 2007.

Duff co-wrote the material for her fourth studio album, Dignity, along with Kara DioGuardi, who co-produced the album with Rhett Lawrence, Tim & Bob and Richard "Humpty" Vission. Duff stated that compared to her previous music, it is "more dancey" and makes use of more real instruments. She said, "I don't know exactly how to explain what we're doing, but it's fun and funky and different, something new for me. It's really cool". She also described the album's sound as "a little less pop-rock and more electronic-sounding".

The first single, "Play with Fire", became a minor club hit but failed to chart in the U.S.; the second single, "With Love", was more successful, becoming Duff's biggest U.S. Hot 100 hit and topping the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play chart. The music video for "With Love" was used as a commercial for Duff's first fragrance, With Love... Hilary Duff, which was launched in September 2006; the video reached number one on Total Request Live. Initially slated for release in late 2006^, the album was released in April 2007 in North America and earlier elsewhere. It reached the top five in the U.S. and Canada, the top twenty in Australia and the top forty in the UK. The Dignity tour began in mid-2007. A third single, "Stranger", was a number one U.S. club hit. In September 2007, Duff announced that she will be recording her next single "Reach Out", which samples Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus". Duff has also confirmed that she has written a song titled "I Will" for singer and Hollywood Records labelmate, Vanessa Hudgens's second album, Identified. This song did not make it onto the album.Duff is expected to record her fifth studio album during summer 2008.

In early 2007, the Duff sisters lent their voices to the computer animated comedy Foodfight!, which is to be distributed by Lions Gate Films and scheduled to release in 2008. The director the film, Larry Kasanoff, said that he is "absolutely thrilled to have the Duff sisters as part of the cast".Duff also stars opposite John Cusack in War, Inc. which was released in theatres in Los Angeles and Manhattan, New York on May 23, 2008. Within a month of its release, it was expanded to several more theaters around the US.On September 7, 2007, Duff confirmed on Much On Demand, that she would be filming two independent films Greta, and Safety Glass. Both movies were filmed in late 2007 and are due to be released in late 2008 or early 2009. Duff has joined the cast of a new Polish brothers comedy Stay Cool. She will co-star alongside Winona Ryder, Mark Polish, Sean Astin, Chevy Chase and Jon Cryer. She will portray the character of Shasta O'Neil, described as a sexy high school senior. The movie is scheduled to start filming in July 2008 in Santa Clarita, California.^[75]

In January 2008, videos of Duff surfaced on YouTube, which showed her singing into her microphone at her concert in Mexico, but her voice was inaudible, leading people to believe that she was lip-syncing. Duff's representative spoke out about the incident saying, "She was not lip-synching. It was faulty equipment. There was no sound coming out, but she was singing". He also added that Duff was not using her regular sound equipment, but instead was using locally provided equipment and that her microphone was inadvertently set on mute for the first few minutes of the performance.

Entrepreneurship

Duff launched her clothing line, "Stuff by Hilary Duff," in March 2004, with clothes distributed through Target in the United States, Kmart in Australia, Zellers in Canada and Edgars Stores in South Africa. The company, initially started as a clothing line, has expanded its business into furniture, fragrances, and jewelry, targeted at the teen and preteen crowd. In 2007, the Internet website Stardoll.com previewed Duff's clothing line to customers by allowing them to dress up a paper doll on the website (which include Hilary Duff's own doll) with the clothes.

Playmates Toys released a celebrity doll of her in 2004.In late 2006, Mattel released a Hilary Duff Barbie doll. As a fashion designer, she had designed clothes for Barbie dolls in the past but with the release of her doll, she joined Reese Witherspoon, Beyonce Knowles and Lucille Ball who have their own celebrity-dolls.

In September 2006, Duff released her perfume, "With Love... Hilary Duff", which was distributed by the Elizabeth Arden company. The perfume was initially sold only in Macy's in the U.S. but soon it was being sold in other regions like Japan and Canada. In 2007, Duff announced that she will be releasing a summer version of the perfume titled, "Wrapped With Love". It was released in January 2008, and a Spring Gift Set version was released in time for Valentines Day.

Duff and her pet dog Lola made an appearance in the Electronic Arts game The Sims 2: Pets, which was released on October 2006. In console versions of the game, Duff's character visits public areas and allows the players to let their Sims socialize with her and Lola. Animal rights' organisation, "Animal welfare league" have criticised Duff and celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Jessica Simpson for displaying their dogs as fashion accessories rather than pets.

Personal life

Duff appearing at MuchMusic in Canada on April 23, 2007 to promote her music.

Duff began dating singer Aaron Carter in 2001. They met on the sets of Lizzie McGuire, during Carter's guest appearance in a Christmas episode. The relationship lasted two years. It was reported that Carter left Duff for Lindsay Lohan, but soon broke up with Lohan and resumed dating Duff. Carter later stated that he also cheated on Duff with her best friend, and that Duff "got her heart broken" and he was "sorry" for his actions. On March 23, 2007, Claymation facsimiles of Duff and Lohan appeared on the celebrity wrestling series Celebrity Death Match. Duff and Lindsay Lohan were later reported to have been involved in a "feud" with each other over their relationship with Carter. In 2007, Duff and Lohan had reconciled. Lohan attended the release party for Duff's album Dignity and Duff told People magazine that she thought Lohan was "fun" and "a nice girl".

In 2004, Duff began dating Good Charlotte singer Joel Madden. After a long period of tabloid speculation, Duff's mother Susan announced their relationship in a June 2005 interview for Seventeen magazine. In a June 2006 interview with Elle, Duff stated

"...(virginity) is definitely something I like about myself. It doesn't mean I haven't thought about sex, because everyone I know has had it and you want to fit in".^[59]

Duff later told MuchMusic that she did not say the quotes attributed to her in the article and that the subject was "definitely not something that I would talk about..." Duff and Madden broke up in November 2006.

In 2007, Duff was photographed many times with NHL player Mike Comrie. Although Duff never revealed much about the relationship, the couple were seen hugging and kissing, with Duff even attending some of Comrie's games. Comrie bought Duff a brand new $100,000 car for her twentieth birthday. Duff is involved with various charities, is an animal rights enthusiast and a member of Kids with a Cause. She also donated $250,000 to help the victims of Hurricane Katrina. In 2005, she donated over 2.5 million meals to Hurricane Katrina victims in the south. In August 2006, Duff traveled to a New Orleans elementary school and worked with USA Harvest to distribute meals.^[100] She has also served on the Advisory Board of the "Audrey Hepburn Child Benefit Fund" and the Celebrity Council of "Kids with a Cause".

In August 2005, Duff said she received veneers because she chipped off one of her front teeth on a microphone during a concert.She explained, "My teeth aren't the strongest, and I kept chipping them on the microphone. One show, I literally spit half of my two front teeth out." She subsequently had her veneers redone to match the size of her original teeth.Duff's parents separated in 2006 after 22 years of marriage, due to infidelity on the part of her father. She wrote about the pain caused by the separation in her songs Stranger and Gypsy Woman.