Hilary Duff began her acting career on television when she played a small, uncredited appearance for Hallmark Television’s True Women in 1997 and another uncredited role for the drama-comedy film of Willard Carroll’s Playing By Heart in 1998. Duff’s first major part in a movie came also in 1998 where she played the young witch named Wendy in the direct-to-video sequel of the movie Casper entitled Casper Meets Wendy. In 1999, she played a supporting role for the television film The Soul Collector based on the novel by Kathleen Kane which stars Bruce Greenwood and Melissa Gilbert. Duff won the Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Movie or Pilot (Best Supporting Actress) for her role. And in 2000, she played the part of one of the children for the pilot episode for NBC’s Daddio with actor Michael Chiklis. Her performance on the show was praised by critics and this where Duff had her serious shot at fame and quoting Chiklis for Duff’s superb acting skills, “This young girl is going to be a movie star, she was completely at ease with herself and comfortable in her own skin.”
Unfortunately, Duff was dropped from the cast of Daddio even before the show was aired and with this very unfortunate incident, she became reluctant to pursue her acting career. But her mother encouraged the young Duff to try her very best and pursue her dreams of becoming an actress and it was during an audition for a new children’s series called Lizzie McGuire where she bagged the lead role of Lizzie who is a clumsy yet average school girl where the show focused mainly about her life and her slow growth to teenhood. The show first aired on the Disney Channel on January of 2001 and it became a huge hit, enjoying a 2.3 million viewership rating per episode. This skyrocketed Duff’s popularity to greater heights as she became a teen superstar among young girls between the ages of seven and fourteen. Duff fulfilled her 65 episode contract with Disney and management considered to ride on Lizzie McGuire’s popularity by venturing into film and getting a prime-time television spot at ABC, but all these plans were sacked when representatives of Duff claimed that the actress was not paid enough for the project. However in 2003, Duff appeared on the big screen as the bubbly Lizzie McGuire in her first feature film spin-off simply entitled The Lizzie McGuire Movie.
During her stint with Lizzie McGuire, Duff also appeared in the Disney Channel television film starring opposite Gary Cole and Christy Carlson Romano in Cadet Kelly. It was Disney’s most watched program in its 19-year history where she played the role of a free-spirited girl who got herself enrolled into military school and realizes the hardship and the adjustments she had to make in a disciplined and strict environment. Duff ventured more into television guestings where she appeared as a sick child in the medical drama Chicago Hope and appeared in one episode of George Lopez where she played the part of a makeup salesperson. Other credited television appearances also includes American Dreams and Joan of Arcadia. Her biggest break into Hollywood came in 2003 where she appeared in the movie Agent Cody Banks playing one of the lead roles starring opposite Frankie Muniz. The movie was praised and received positive reviews from movie critics that it was enough to spawn another sequel but Duff declined to participate. The following year she was to star in this upcoming romantic comedy entitled A Cinderella Story that despite getting negative reviews, the film somehow made it big in the box office and movie critics were impressed with Duff’s exemplary performance. The movie earned $66 million worldwide and was considered a commercial success. She also starred in the movie Raise your Voice where the actress made her first acting role in a drama film. Some of the film critics praised Duff for venturing into more mature and serious roles unlike the one she did previously but the film itself got some really bad and nasty reviews regarding Duff’s bad acting and singing. It was the actress’ least commercial successful movie in her career earning just less than $14 million in the box office.
Currently, Duff is filming two independent films Greta and Safety Glass and is due to be released by the end of 2008 or early 2009 and she is to star opposite actor John Cusack for the movie War, Inc. that is scheduled for a limited release on May 2008.
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