Make no mistake: Hilary Duff had the time of her life portraying Lizzie McGuire. But even though she only played the character for two years, it took her much longer than that to break free from it. Post-Disney, she had a tough time nabbing other roles because directors only saw her through Lizzie-colored lenses. “I was like, ‘I’m me! I’m Hilary, not that person. That’s a made-up person,” the actor told Bustle. “It was a desire to be seen as a person outside of a character.”
At one point, Duff almost wished she was never associated with the show at all. “I really didn’t want to be Lizzie McGuire anymore,” she admitted on the “Good Guys” podcast. “For so long, people were just like, ‘Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie’ and still now to this day, which it doesn’t bother me anymore but it did for a while, like I just desperately needed to be my own person. I thought music was going to be a good way to reintroduce myself.”
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Duff did launch a solo music career and released wildly successful albums. It was then that she realized the impact Lizzie had on her life. “Maybe [at] 24, 25, I was like, “Oh, I love Lizzie, and I love all that she did for me, and I get it. I get it all,'” she shared with Harper’s Bazaar. “But it just took me a moment to come back to her and accept that.”
