Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Hilary Duff













Hilary Erhard Duff (born September 28, 1987) is an American actress and singer–songwriter. After working in local theater plays and television commercials in her childhood, Duff gained fame for playing the title role in the television series Lizzie McGuire. Duff subsequently ventured into feature films, with her most commercially successful movies being Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003), and A Cinderella Story (2004).

Duff expanded her repertoire into pop music with the release of three RIAA-certified platinum albums and over thirteen million records sold worldwide as of February 2007.Her first studio album, Metamorphosis (2003), was certified triple platinum and she followed it up with two more platinum albums, Hilary Duff (2004) and Most Wanted (2005).
Duff had a musical comeback with the release of her third studio album, Dignity (2007), which was certified gold in August 2007 and released two singles, "With Love", her biggest US single to date and "Stranger". In November 2008, she released another Greatest Hits compilation, Best of Hilary Duff with her third #1 on the Billboard Hot Dance Club Play single "Reach Out" .

Duff has also launched clothing lines including, "Stuff by Hilary Duff", and Femme for DKNY Jeans and two exclusive perfume collections with Elizabeth Arden. Duff and her mother were listed as producers for the movie Material Girls. Duff is credited as executive producer for the upcoming independent film Greta.
Public image and personal life:
In a June 2006 interview with Elle magazine, Duff was quoted as saying: "...(virginity) is definitely something I like about myself. It doesn't mean I haven't thought about sex, because everyone I know has had it and you want to fit in". Duff later told MuchMusic that she did not say the quotes attributed to her in the article and that the subject was "definitely not something that I would talk about..." She denied the quotes again in a 2008 interview with Maxim magazine.

In 2005, Duff's earnings were estimated to be $15 million and in December 2007, Duff was ranked at #7 in the Forbes "Top 20 Earners Under 25", with an annual earnings of $12 million. In 2007, Duff was ranked at #23 in Maxim's "Hot 100" list. In 2008, Duff was ranked #7 for the US edition of FHM's "100 Sexiest Women in the World", while for the UK edition she ranked in at #8.

By 2005, Duff appeared to have lost weight, leading the media to speculate that she had developed an eating disorder, though Duff denied this claim. Duff was interviewed on the Australian current affair show Today Tonight and stated that she lost weight by leading a more active lifestyle.
Later in 2006, an article on Digital Spy stated that Duff had slimmed down to a U.S. size zero because of media reports suggesting she had gained fifteen pounds. She later stated that she had been feeling the pressure to be thin, because she is perceived in the media to be either too fat or too thin. Duff called this "judgmental" and "mean".
In June 2006, when asked about her then-boyfriend Joel Madden, a native of Waldorf, Maryland, in an interview with Elle, Duff replied, "He's very real, like, he's from a pretty ghetto place in Maryland... I like that". Duff's "ghetto" comments sparked a mixture of mild offense and bemusement from residents of the Waldorf area, as the suburban, mostly middle-class town did not fall into the traditional impoverished inner city concept of a ghetto. Duff later claimed she was referring not to Waldorf, but actually a section of Baltimore where Madden lived briefly as a young adult.

In late 2006 Duff took legal action against an alleged stalker and his roommate. On November 3, 2006, Duff's stalker, Maksim Miakovsky, was arrested for threatening to kill her. He was booked on charges of making criminal threats and stalking.
According to legal papers filed by Duff, Miakovsky came to the U.S. "for the sole purpose of meeting and becoming romantically involved with Ms. Duff". Miakovsky was being held on $200,000 bail at the Manhattan Beach jail. He was arraigned on November 7, 2006. On January 19, 2007, Miakovsky was sentenced to 117 days in jail and five years probation after pleading no contest to the charges.

In January 2008, videos of Duff surfaced on YouTube, which showed her singing into her microphone at her concert in Mexico, but her voice was inaudible, leading viewers to believe that she was lip-syncing. Duff's representative defended her saying, "She was not lip-synching. It was faulty equipment.
There was no sound coming out, but she was singing". He also added that Duff was not using her regular sound equipment, but instead was using locally provided equipment and that her microphone was inadvertently set on mute for the first few minutes of the performance.