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— by Ryan J. Downey
Hilary Duff is ready to commit suicide. OK, maybe she isn't totally sold on the idea of slashing her wrists or leaping out a window, but she's thought about it. Or rather she's thinking about considering it.
Hilary gets a lot of scripts these days — which her mom (hey, she is just 15) and her dialog coach meticulously sort through — but one project in particular recently caught her eye. It would offer her the chance to play someone a bit dark, a bit edgy and, well, a bit suicidal.
"I don't want to say the name of the script, because it's not, like, a done deal or anything," Duff said cautiously, shortly after finishing up a recent photo shoot. "But it's more of an independent movie. It wouldn't be, like, a big box-office thing. ... [The main character] has this horrible life. And she talks about some really weird things. And she's just kind of really out there. ... It's very dark, but it's funny at the same time."
Wait a minute. Will the world embrace Hilary Duff — you know, Lizzie f'n McGuire — in a black-humor indie drama? Well, stranger things have happened. The Houston-born actress isn't old enough to drive, yet she's already the "tween" queen of an empire that includes books, games, clothes, a top 10 soundtrack and a hit flick all based around the Disney Channel's "Lizzie McGuire," which she started making at 13.
These days, when Duff hits the streets, it's not quite Beatlemania, but the ensuing preteen fan frenzy could give any "Beverly Hills, 90210" star flashbacks to 1993.
To put it simply, little Hilary Duff is huge.
"When I was in New York, when I did 'TRL,' the next day I did a signing and there were what, like 4,000 people?" she said, checking with her dialog coach as he drove her down the freeway. "Yeah, there were 4,000 people crowding the streets. They had to shut the streets down. Some people were out there since like 3 in the morning, which was really cool. And they flew in from all different places.
"It definitely makes it really hard to go shopping or to the movies, or — I mean, it makes it really hard to go out. But it's really cool at the same time, because these people are the people that let me do what I love to do every single day. It does get hard sometimes, but it's nice and it's rewarding."
Over a crackling cell phone connection, Duff spoke with all the bubbling enthusiasm one might expect from any actress whose first starring vehicle just made nearly $40 million in four weeks. On this particular day, she was on her way to the set of a Steve Martin-led remake of the 1950 comedy "Cheaper by the Dozen," and later she'll hit a recording studio to continue work on her debut album. "[My life] is very crazy and busy," she acknowledged, "but I love it that way. And I love to be on the edge and have so much stuff to do."
And Duff's no dummy. She reportedly just severed ties with the Disney folks when they refused to pay her boatloads of cash to make a "Lizzie McGuire" sequel and "only" offered to up her per-episode salary from $15,000 to $35,000. She's furiously pushing ahead because, let's face it, most kids who get this big this fast don't stick around. She is, by all accounts, as squeaky clean a role model as the middle school gal she played on TV, but that doesn't mean she isn't savvy.
So just how does she intend to weather the transition from lunchbox icon to credible thespian?
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Photo: Walt Disney Pictures
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