ACC, Toronto – September 8, 2007

TORONTO — “Hilary! Hilary! Hilary!”

So went the high-pitched chant for Hilary Duff Saturday night, as mostly young female fans screamed at the top of their lungs for the teen pop queen before she even stepped on stage at Toronto’s Air Canada Centre.

The 19-year-old Texas native was supposed to be at the Molson Amphitheatre this summer with her so-called Dignity tour but that date was rescheduled.

Let’s just say anticipation was high, even if the ACC wasn’t sold out.

Still, the new date enabled Duff to open CityTv’s annual “festival schmooze” on Friday night on Queen Street West, which helped kickoff the Toronto International Film Festival’s hectic first weekend.

The crowd was considerably younger at the ACC, where glow-in-the-dark sticks were being twirled like the kids had had one too many espressos. (No, wait a minute, I’m thinking about journalists at a film festival press conference I attended earlier in the day.)

Anyway, Duff is touring in support of her latest album, Dignity, and compared to such pantyless, head shaved and rehab car wrecks as Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie – to name the tabloid fixtures du jour – she’s doing remarkably well.

“Where’s your dignity? I think you lost it in the Hollywood Hills,” goes the chorus of Dignity’s title track, which made up the scheduled 100-minute set list.

And whether or not Duff is dating Edmonton-born New York Islanders centre Mike Comrie just further endears her to her Canadian hockey-worshipping fans.

Opening last night with Play With Fire and Danger, both from Dignity, Duff started out dressed somewhat provocatively (for her anyway) in a sparkly-gold hot pants-type outfit and black patent leather high heels. She was surrounded by the requisite four dancers and eight-piece band.

“Hey Toronto! How you guys doing?” said Duff, whose first big hit was the third song, Come Clean. “Oh, my Gosh, this is so exciting.”

Really?

There is something oddly soulless, verging on boring, about Duff’s undeniable accessibility – with her perfect posture and vocals (enhanced?), clipped dance moves, crimped hair and various outfits. (She later changed into a gold trench coat, then a white tank top and orange fringed mini-skirt, followed by a silver and black sequined mini-dress and so on.)

She’s like a Stepford Wife for the teen set, who don’t really seem to mind. They saved their biggest singalongs on Saturday night for Someone To Watch Over Me, Beat Of My Heart, Why Not, So Yesterday, With Love, Wake Up, Fly, and her abbreviated covers of The Go-Gos’ Our Lips Our Sealed and the full version of Pat Benatar’s Love Is A Battlefield.

Just as Duff was introducing her fourth song, The Getaway, someone hurled a stuffed teddy bear at her feet. Duff muttered a quick thank-you before dropping it out of sight without much emotion.

The whole evening kind of felt like she’s been there, done that and is just going through the motions at this point.

The one real moment of spontaneity came when one of her male dancers accidentally crashed into her during I Wish.

Duff’s remaining dates see her at London’s John Labatt Centre on Monday night (Sept. 10) and Sault Ste. Marie’s Steelback Centre on Tuesday night (Sept. 11).

Hilary Duff Photo Archive

                                                                           

About Hilary Duff

Hilary Erhard Duff (born September 28, 1987) is an American actress, pop singer and entrepreneur. She has an elder sister, Haylie Duff, who is also an actress/singer.

After gaining fame for her starring role on the television show Lizzie McGuire, Duff went on to have a film career, and her most commercially successful pictures include Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003), and A Cinderella Story (2004). She reportedly earned $15 million in 2005. Duff has expanded her repertoire into pop music, with three RIAA certified-platinum albums and over thirteen million albums sold worldwide, and she has launched a clothing line, Stuff by Hilary Duff, and an exclusive perfume with Elizabeth Arden.

Her upcoming films include the 2007 action thriller War, Inc. and animated comedy Foodfight!. Duff’s latest studio album, Dignity, was released in April 2007.

Duff was born in Houston, Texas, the second child of Bob Erhard Duff, owner of a chain of convenience stores, and Susan Colleen (nee Cobb), a homemaker. After Duff’s mother encouraged her to take an acting class alongside her older sister, Haylie Katherine Duff, both girls won parts in various local theater productions. At the ages of eight and six, respectively, the Duff sisters participated in the ballet The Nutcracker Suite with Columbus Ballet Met in San Antonio. The siblings became more enthusiastic about the idea of acting professionally, and eventually relocated to California with their mother. Bob Erhard Duff stayed at the family home in Houston to maintain their business. After several years of auditions and meetings, the Duff sisters were cast in several television commercials.

Most of Duff’s first few acting roles were small, starting off with an uncredited appearance in Hallmark Entertainment’s western miniseries True Women (1997). She also served as an extra, again uncredited, in writer-director Willard Carroll’s ensemble dramedy Playing by Heart (1998). Her first major part was as the star of the 1998 film Casper Meets Wendy, playing the young witch Wendy, who encounters the animated character Casper. Like Casper: A Spirited Beginning (1997), the second sequel to the successful Casper (1995), the film was released direct-to-video with mostly unenthusiastic reviews.

Duff later appeared in a supporting role in the television film The Soul Collector (1999), which was based on a Kathleen Kane novel and starred Bruce Greenwood as an angel who helps a widowed farmer (Melissa Gilbert). Duff won a Young Artist Award for “Best Performance in a TV Movie or Pilot (Supporting Young Actress)”.

Duff’s first serious shot at fame came when she was cast as one of the children in the pilot episode of the NBC sitcom Daddio (2000). Actor Michael Chiklis, co-star of Daddio stated, “After working with her the first day, I remember saying to my wife, ‘This young girl is going to be a movie star’. She was completely at ease with herself and comfortable in her own skin.”[5]

Lizzie McGuire
Duff portraying Lizzie McGuire.

Before Daddio had aired, Duff was dropped from its cast lineup and became reluctant to continue her acting career. Her manager and mother spurred her on, and a week later she successfully auditioned for the family comedy show Lizzie McGuire. In the series, Duff portrayed a clumsy but average middle school girl. The show focused on her life and her slow growth into teenhood. Actors that starred alongside her included Lalaine, Adam Lamberg, Jake Thomas, Clayton Snyder, Ashlie Brillault, Robert Carradine, and Hallie Todd.

Lizzie McGuire, which first aired on the Disney Channel in January 12, 2001, was a ratings hit, drawing in 2.3 million viewers per episode, and became the career breakthrough Duff had been waiting for. Her participation in the show led to her becoming highly popular among children between the ages of seven and fourteen, with critic Richard Huff of the New York Daily News calling her “a 2002 version of Annette Funicello.” After Duff fulfilled her entire sixty-five episode contract with Lizzie McGuire, Disney considered continuing the franchise in further films and a prime-time television series to be broadcast on ABC, but the plans deteriorated. A successful feature film spin-off, The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003), was produced.

Other projects

During her time on Lizzie McGuire, Duff starred opposite Christy Carlson Romano and Gary Cole in the Disney Channel television film Cadet Kelly (2002), which became the network’s most watched program in its nineteen-year history.

Duff has made several guest appearances in television shows, her first as a sick child in the medical drama Chicago Hope in March 2000. In a 2003 episode of George Lopez, she had a role as a makeup salesperson, and she later reappeared in the show in 2005 as a feminist poet friend of Carmen (Masiela Lusha), a character whose poetry had roots in the work of Simone de Beauvoir, Toril Moi, and Ranjit Hakim. She acted opposite her sister Haylie as the 1960s pop group The Shangri-Las in American Dreams in 2003, and played a classmate and idolizer of the title character of Joan of Arcadia in a 2005 episode. During her Most Wanted tour, she performed in Guadalajara, Mexico, where she filmed a brief appearance on the soap opera Rebelde. She was also the guest star on The Andy Milonakis Show for its third season premiere in 2007.

Film career

Duff’s first role in a theatrical motion picture was in Human Nature (2002), an independent film shot before Lizzie McGuire and first shown at the Cannes and Sundance film festivals. Written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Michel Gondry, the film follows a female naturalist, played by Patricia Arquette. Duff played the younger version of Arquette’s character.

2003–2004

Her first major role in a feature film was in the family action film Agent Cody Banks with Frankie Muniz in 2003. The film received positive reviews and was successful enough to spawn a sequel, in which Duff did not participate. Afterwards, Duff reprised her role as Lizzie McGuire for The Lizzie McGuire Movie, which exceeded box office expectations earning $55,534,455 worldwide.

Duff in an ad for The Lizzie McGuire Movie.

Later that year, Duff played one of the twelve children of Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt in the family film Cheaper by the Dozen, which remains her highest grossing film. She reprised her role in the sequel to the film called Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (2005), which failed to be as financially successful as the original film and was panned by critics.

In 2004, Duff starred in the romantic comedy A Cinderella Story, an update of Charles Perrault’s fairy tale Cinderella. The film became a moderate box office hit, and though reviews were mostly negative, some critics were impressed by Duff’s performance and her chemistry with co-star Chad Michael Murray. A Cinderella Story earned $66,068,046 worldwide and was a commercial success. Later that year she starred in the film Raise Your Voice, her first starring role in a drama film. Some critics praised Duff for appearing in a more dramatic role than previously, but the film was heavily panned, with the Las Vegas Weekly writing: “Effortlessly combining Duff’s bad acting and bad singing with bad writing and bad direction, Raise Your Voice is an insulting waste of time that begs to be silenced.” Several reviews were negative to Duff’s vocals (several critics pointed out what appears to be her digitally enhanced voice) and indifferent towards her acting performance. The film received a muted reception at the box office, and is Duff’s least successful film commercially, with total theater receipts of just $13,573,284. Duff received her first Razzie nomination for worst actress for her roles in Raise Your Voice and Cinderella Story’.

2005–2006
Hilary Duff (on the left) pictured with sister and co-star Haylie Duff in the 2006 film, Material Girls.

In The Perfect Man (2005), she played the oldest daughter of a divorced woman (Heather Locklear), who moves to New York City as she desperately searches for love. Reviews were mostly negative and the film disappointed at the box office, grossing $19,770,475 globally. That year, Duff was again nominated for a Razzie Award, for both The Perfect Man and Cheaper by the Dozen 2. The 2006 satirical comedy Material Girls, in which she co-starred with her sister Haylie, also disappointed, grossing only $14,189,525 worldwide. The Martha Coolidge-directed film, co-produced by Madonna’s independent film production company Maverick Entertainment, starred the Duffs as wealthy siblings who must fight to reclaim their fortune following a scandal. For the film, Hilary was nominated for another two Razzie awards.

2007

The Duff sisters are due to lend their voices to the computer animated comedy Foodfight!, which Lions Gate Films is to distribute in 2008. The film’s director, Larry Kasanoff, said that he is “absolutely thrilled to have the Duff sisters as part of the cast.” Duff is currently slated to star opposite John Cusack in War, Inc., due for release in late 2007. On September 7, 2007, Duff confirmed on Much On Demand, that she would be filming two films in September through October. The films will be called “Gretta”, and “Safety Glass”. She described them as “Edgy, independent films”.