Hilary Erhard Duff or most popularly known as Hilary Duff was born in Houston, Texas on September 28, 1987. She is the second child to proud parents Susan Colleen and Robert Erhard Duff. Her mother was a simple homemaker while her father worked as a partner in a chain of convenience stores. Her elder sister, Haylie Duff, is an actress and a singer. It was through their mother encouragement that Duff learned to love the arts and acting when she was convinced to come along with Haylie in her acting class. The two Duff sisters won parts in various local theatre productions. At age eight and six respectively, the sisters participated in the famous ballet The Nutcracker where they performed with the Columbus BalletMet in San Antonio, Texas. Both Haylie and Hilary became so enthusiastic about acting professionally that they even moved to California with their mother while their dad Robert stayed behind and looked after the family’s business. Both mother and daughters spent several years auditioning and attending meetings and soon the Duff siblings were cast in various television commercials.
Hilary started her early career by playing minor roles mostly for television, and one of those was back in 1997 where she played a small and uncredited role in the western miniseries True Women shown on the Hallmark Channel, she then later appears as an extra for another uncredited role in the dramedy from writer-director Willard Carroll’s Playing By Heart in 1998. On that same year, Hilary got her first major acting role in the film Casper Meets Wendy, a sequel to the hit movie Casper where she played the role of the young witch Wendy. The movie received lukewarm reviews from critics after its release. 1999 saw Duff doing a supporting role for the TV film The Soul Collector where she starred opposite Melissa Gilbert and Bruce Greenwood. Duff got her very first acting trophy when she won the Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Movie or Pilot for her role in the movie. But Duff’s biggest shot at fame came in 2000 where she was cast as one of the children in the pilot episode of ABC’s sitcom Daddio with actor Michael Chiklis at the helm. But fate was too unkind to the budding actress when she was later taken out from the cast even before the show aired on TV and this made Duff reluctant to pursue further her dreams of becoming an actress. Her mother who acted as her manager as well encouraged the young Duff to strive on and it wasn’t for long that Duff got to play the lead role for the Disney Channel’s new children’s series called Lizzie McGuire where she played the role of the clumsy, middle school girl named Lizzie where the show evolved around her life and her slow growth into teenhood. The show was a big hit among young girls aged seven to fourteen and Duff became an instant celebrity when the show was first aired on January 2001 and was watched by 2.3 million viewers per episode. In 2003 despite the controversies that came between Duff and management, she got to star in the feature film spin-off The Lizzie McGuire Movie.
Hilary Duff made waves in the industry that she made other television appearances for such TV shows like Chicago Hope, Joan of Arcadia, George Lopez and American Dreams. Her first major role in a movie came in 2003 where she starred in the family action flick Agent Cody Banks with Frankie Muniz. The movie was a big success that they came up with a sequel but Duff chose not to participate in the film. She went on doing more movie projects like Cheaper by the Dozen 1 and 2 with Steve Martin, A Cinderella Story, Raise Your Voice and The Perfect Man with Heather Locklear. Duff decided to try her luck with singing and as she shuffled her way with her busy schedule as an actress, she did some songs for the Lizzie McGuire soundtrack including “I Can’t Wait” and “Why Not” which peaked at number fourteen in the Australian charts. The entire Lizzie McGuire soundtrack achieved platinum status in 2003. Duff went on to work on her second and first studio album called Metamorphosis on the same year and reached the number one slot in the United States and Canada selling over 3.7 million copies. Her first single “So Yesterday” was a top ten hit in other countries and it’s follow-up single “Come Clean” was even used for the soundtrack of MTV’s reality show “Laguna Beach” and was Duff’s first top forty hit in the US. She came out with a third album self-titled Hilary Duff where she co-written some of the songs in the album and a fourth album entitled “Most Wanted” in 2005 that includes such hits as “Wake Up” and “Beat of My Heart”.
Currently, Duff is coming out with a movie starring opposite John Cusack in War, Inc. that is due to run on limited release by May of 2008 and the actress confirmed that she’s doing two independent films Greta and Safety Glass that were both filmed in late 2007 and will be released around late 2008 or early 2009.