hilaryduff

Hilary Duffs bilder av Toronto's Tannis Toohey för The Star. Verkligen jätte gullig och jätte fina bilder, gillar verkligen hennes hår på bilderna, CUTIE.

 

 

She still acts, but former child star is focused on music with a new disc she co-wrote

Pop Music Critic

As someone who's grown up in the full glare of Disney-steered international stardom, Hilary Duff has the potential to be a right little diva.

Indeed, one was bracing for the worst yesterday as a cadre of handlers endlessly primped and preened the diminutive starlet and gave stern notice to reporters and photographers as to which small section of her pink-hued Yorkville hotel suite would be the "working area" before finally relinquishing their charge for another interview during a long day of press to pump Duff's third pop album.

This writer briefly feared for his life, in fact, when his friendly quip of: "Oh, you don't have to pretty yourself up for me," drew the iciest of icy gazes from one large, male associate.

Turns out, though, that the 19-year-old Duff is a charming, surprisingly self-effacing sweetie in conversation.

She pokes fun at her manager's German accent, confesses her deep love of Morrissey and underground Omaha electro-punk outfit The Faint ? who recently rewarded Duff's effusive fanhood by remixing one of the many dance floor-inclined tracks on Dignity ? and doesn't even bat an eye at an ill-conceived (and unintentional) jab at band Good Charlotte, whose front man Joel Madden was, until recently, her boyfriend.

The new album, her third, "was a big change because I wrote it," says Duff, who co-authored Dignity with a number of A-list producers and songwriters for hire. "It has all of me in it. I never did my records like that before. I got to choose the music, but this time around it was, like, I'd sit down and think: `What happened to me yesterday? What happened to me today?' and just write. It was very therapeutic, in a way. And easy ? I was shocked at how easy it was to be honest about yourself and things that affect you.

"It is a dance record, but I wanted it to be serious. I wanted to talk about serious things, but do it in a not-so-serious way, with music that makes you want to get up and dance."

Although she has two No. 1 albums under her belt, Duff maintains she's still not entirely sure of herself as a pop singer. She wasn't that confident laying out her vision for the record in the studio, she says, and it's taken her a couple of tours to get over being "petrified" when she sings in front of crowds.

"I told my manager, `I don't know why you wanna work with me. I wanna be a singer, but I don't know what I'm doing and you're never gonna get me on a stage. I don't wanna do that in front of people,'" she recalls.

"I'm used to being able to mess up and go again, and have no one see my mess-ups and have it not really matter. But onstage you only have one shot and that made me nervous. But now I'm cool with it.

"You get kind of addicted to it, you know? It's that feeling of total acceptance. When people come to your show, they come for you ? they love you. And I just had to put that in my mind to feel comfortable and then it was, like, a blast."

Duff, who's appeared in such films as Material Girls, Cheaper By the Dozen and Cinderella Story since successfully taking her immensely popular Lizzie McGuire TV character to the big screen in 2003, hasn't completely abandoned her movie career for a career in pop, having just wrapped the drama War Inc. alongside John and Joan Cusack, Marisa Tomei and Ben Kingsley. She'll return to TV briefly tomorrow, when she replaces Ben Mulroney as Tanya Kim's co-host on CTV's eTalk.

She's completely at ease flitting between the two worlds, she says, but will allow that she finds the life of a rock 'n' roller a little more agreeable.

"Maybe I'm a little bit of a schizophrenic. It's just so normal for me now. I was writing my record and then I went to film a movie, and you definitely do change paces. But being on tour, you get to sleep all day and then play your shows at night. And with movies, you get up at 5 and you film all day. I like it just as much, but it's definitely not as exciting."