Hilary Duff says she grew tired of being associated with Lizzie McGuire after the Disney Channel series made her a child star. In an interview with Paper, the singer and actor recalled feeling exhausted during the filming of the 2003 film and celebrating when that chapter ended.
Duff was 13 when she began playing Lizzie, a role she portrayed across 65 episodes, a film and a short. She said the intense production schedule and the constant focus on the character made it difficult to separate Lizzie from her own identity. “Everyone called me Lizzie,” she recalled, adding that by the time she travelled to Italy to film the movie, she felt she had had enough.
That reaction also affected her relationship with “What Dreams Are Made Of,” the best-known song from the film. Duff did not perform it for around 20 years, explaining that she was trying to establish herself independently from the Disney character. At the time, she felt the song did not belong to her and decided she would never sing it again.
Her view has since changed. Now performing the song during her world tour, Duff says she can join in the celebration of what Lizzie McGuire meant to fans and what the role means to her today. She has also learned to appreciate a period of her life that she once found difficult to value, saying that she now looks back on it as an extraordinary experience.
Duff has described the transition from child star to adult performer as challenging. Although she did not initially feel affection for that stage of her career, her audience retained a strong connection with the character and the series. She now feels more present when performing the song and more able to claim it as part of her own story.
A proposed return to Lizzie McGuire was developed in 2020, when two episodes featuring Duff were reportedly filmed, but the project was eventually halted and cancelled. Duff is currently focused on music. She released the seven-track EP Mine, featuring newly recorded versions of earlier hits, two months after releasing her sixth studio album, Luck... or Something. She is also on a world tour, with a Madrid date scheduled for May 7.
Over the past year, Duff has also been drawn into a public dispute involving actress Ashley Tisdale and a group of celebrity mothers that included Duff, Mandy Moore and Meghan Trainor. Tisdale said she had left what she described as a toxic group after feeling excluded from plans and social events.
Duff later addressed the controversy on the Call Her Daddy podcast, saying she felt sad and confused by Tisdale’s account. She explained that she belongs to several groups of mothers because she has four children and said she felt the message was inaccurate and arrived at a difficult moment.
Sources: El País Portada.