People: Finally getting off her Duff
There are actors who sing and singers who act, but few entertainers have successfully balanced those twin careers.
Neither could Hilary Duff, though not for lack of trying.
While her music career skyrocketed – she released two platinum albums and a greatest-hits disc in three years – the former Disney child star was stalled as an actress.
“It always shocks me the lack of openness, the lack of imagination that some casting directors have,” say Duff, 19.
“I would read a script and be so in love with that, and someone would be like, ‘Hilary Duff? Oh no, we don’t want her for that.’ “
As bad scripts and rejections kept coming, Duff decided to stop the balancing act and put 100 percent into her music.
“Dignity,” released this week, is a club-oriented record filled with pulsating grooves, but also tackles some of the more serious issues she’s faced since her last record, including a breakup with Good Charlotte’s Joel Madden and her parents’ own split.
“I really got to have fun,” says Duff, who co-wrote all but one song on the disc. “It’s a new side of me and part of me. …
“It was very liberating – writing it is like a therapy session.”
Though she and Madden at first raised eyebrows because of their seven-year age difference, they seemed like a solid couple. But Duff says she broke it off last year when she had a feeling that “this isn’t right anymore.”
She still speaks warmly of Madden (“I will always love him, he was a wonderful person”) and admits it was hard to see him move on so quickly to his current flame, tabloid magnet Nicole Richie. But she’s happy being single.
“I want to be alone – I wouldn’t imagine dating someone,” Duff says. “It was hard, it is painful, I still get really sad, but I feel empowered.”
While Duff was able to express different emotions on record, she found it difficult in her acting – mainly because most of the offered roles kept her in “Lizzie McGuire” mode, with fluffy family films like “Cheaper by the Dozen.”
“I really didn’t want to do that,” says Duff, still frustrated at the thought. “I wanted to challenge myself and do something unexpected, and also wanted to be excited about it.”
She even began to doubt her acting skills. “I felt kind of in a weird place,” she says. “That’s when I started making my records.”
It wasn’t until she was a month deep into recording “Dignity” that a film project stirred her interest: “War, Inc.,” written by John Cusack, who also stars in it.
Duff, who plays an oversexed eastern European superstar, took a break from recording to shoot the movie in Bulgaria, which she describes as a “life-changing experience.”
“Going up there, I was a little intimidated and scared,” she says. “It kind of brought back the passion I knew I had.
“Before, I definitely considered myself more of a singer. I think definitely since I did the movie I was like, ‘I’m an actress.’ “
The birthday bunch
Sitar player Ravi Shankar is 87. Actor James Garner is 79. Actor Wayne Rogers (“M*A*S*H”) is 74. Director Francis Ford Coppola is 68. Singer John Oates (Hall and Oates) is 58. Singer Janis Ian is 56. Actor Jackie Chan is 53. Actor Russell Crowe is 43. Actor Bill Bellamy is 42.