Hilary Duff revealed why she didn’t want to play Lizzie McGuire anymore at the height of her teen fame in the 2000s.
Appearing on Josh Peck and Ben Soffer’s Good Guys podcast, the former Disney Channel star revealed why she “really didn’t want to be Lizzie McGuire anymore, as cool as it was.”
Duff’s role as Lizzie McGuire launched her into tween superstardom in the early 2000s. She played the iconic character for two seasons between 2001 and 2004. She also appeared in the The Lizzie McGuire Movie, which was released theatrically in 2003.
“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 explained of why she wanted to leave Lizzie McGuire behind after the series concluded.
At the time, Duff believed her music career would be “a good way to introduce myself, reintroduce myself, and it was.”
Duff released her U.S. Billboard 200 No. 1 album Metamorphosis in 2003, followed by Hilary Duff in 2004 and Dignity in 2007. Metamorphosis spawned hit singles “So Yesterday” and “Come Clean.”
Watch Hilary Duff’s “So Yesterday” Music Video:
Since her time on the Disney Channel, Duff has had a successful singing and acting career, appearing in films such as Cheaper by the Dozen, A Cinderella Story, The Perfect Man and more.
Duff currently stars as Sophie in the Hulu series How I Met Your Father, which is a spinoff of How I Met Your Mother. A planned and semi-filmed Lizzie McGuire revival was canceled in 2020.
Musically speaking, Duff released her last album, Breath In. Breath Out., in 2015.
In 2022, she spoke to Cosmopolitan about possibly getting back into the studio to create more music.
“I’m not working on music right now but I have been talking to my husband [fellow artist Matthew Koma] about getting into the studio and starting to stretch the muscles a little bit,” Duff said.
“I really want to, but I need time to figure out what I’m saying, what kind of record I’m making, and who it’s for. But, yes, I want to,” she added.
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