Hilary Duff talks shedding ‘Lizzie McGuire’ image and how her music ‘reintroduced’ her

Hilary Duff admitted that she didn’t want to be the eponymous spunky preteen in Disney’s hit show Lizzie McGuire after it was over.

During her discussion with pal Josh Peck and Ben Soffer on their Good Guys podcast, Duff shared that “really didn’t want to be Lizzie McGuire anymore, as cool as it was” after her breakout show ended in 2004, via People Magazine.

“For so long people were just like ‘Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie’,” she detailed. “And still, now to this day, which it doesn’t bother me anymore but it did for a while, I just desperately needed to be my own person.”

She added, “I think that I thought music was gonna be a good way to introduce myself, reintroduce myself, and it was.”

The So Yesterday singer released her debut studio album Santa Claus Lane in 2002. “I would say that was five years of my life, just trying to navigate becoming a person that I wanted to be outside of who everybody wanted me to be,” she shared.

“I remember being on tour and having mothers come up to me and be like, ‘Never change! Whatever you do, just never, never, never change!’” Duff recalled. “And I would go into my dressing room after a meet-and-greet and just be like, ‘What?’ They probably didn’t mean anything by it, but could you imagine telling an 18-year-old or 17-year-old to never change?”

The Sparks singer played Lizzie for two seasons from 2001 to 2004 on Disney and also starred in 2003’s The Lizzie McGuire Movie.

Although a Disney+ reboot was cancelled shortly after filming began, Duff previously said she’s “optimistic” about the show’s fate.

She later on acted in films like Cheaper By the Dozen, A Cinderella Story, Raise Your Voice, The Perfect Man and Material Girls, and made dozens of appearances across television series.

She currently stars in the lead role as Sophie on Hulu’s How I Met Your Father.

On the music-making front, Duff shared, “I do want to” make more music, adding, “I miss that version of myself. And I definitely think that I have more to do in that department. I just don’t know when.”

She explained, “I think that I will. I just don’t know. Right now, I barely have enough time to give to my three children I decided to bring into the world.”

The actress and singer has son Luca Cruz Comrie, 11, with first husband, Mike Comrie. And she shares two daughters with Banks Violet, 4, and Mae James Blair, 1, with her now-husband Matthew Koma.