MILEY CYRUS TALKS FRANKLY ABOUT STARDOM, VIRGINITY, AND "HANNAH MONTANA"
source: dailymail.co.uk
With a hit TV show, two blockbuster films and an autobiography to her credit, Miley Cyrus has £17million in the bank.
And she is still only 16 years old. With innocent understatement verging on the ironic, she explains that she's had to grow up fast 'because people expect so much more of you when you are famous, and all I've ever wanted to do is to make an impact on the world'.
As the wholesome, fresh-faced star of the Disney Channel's top TV series Hannah Montana, she brought London's Leicester Square to a halt last week when - wearing a thigh-high glittery dress and 4in heels - she arrived for the premiere of her new movie.
It is based on the eponymous character she plays on TV: Miley Stewart, a typical schoolgirl by day, who is transformed into international pop star Hannah Montana by night, the minute she dons her blonde wig - the girlie equivalent of Clark Kent taking off his nerdy glasses to become Superman!
Only a few friends and her father (played by Miley's real dad, singer Billy Ray Cyrus) are privy to Miley's secret, and it is the contrast between her everyday existence and her escapist fantasy life which proves instrumental to the show's significant appeal.
Hannah Montana is the number-one show for the lucrative tween audience of six to 14-year-olds, while spin-off albums from the series have all topped the American charts.
Tickets for the Hannah Montana/Miley Cyrus tour of 2007 sold out within four minutes, while last year's film of the tour grossed almost £45million, making it the biggest-selling concert movie of all time.
Combine that with the merchandising - Hannah Montana stationery, dolls and even furniture - and the diminutive Miley Cyrus is a juggernaut of unstoppable power.
For a teenager intent on global domination, however, she walks into the suite of LA's Four Seasons Hotel looking amazingly laidback in a floaty top, jeans and moccasins, her face betraying just the slightest hint of make-up - she looks far more her age than the siren who bowled up to the London premiere in that very mini mini-dress and heels.
Since moving from her home town of Franklin, Tennessee at 13 to star in the Hannah Montana series, her time in the spotlight has been relentless.
But while she displays an unnerving degree of self-possession for someone so young - some would say her recent appearance on Jonathan Ross's chatshow was overwhelming to put it mildly - she is also given to bouts of teenage hyperbole, peppering her chat with proclamations such as: 'That's supercool!' and 'Boys are jerks!' (Her reasoning for the latter is not clear).
She may be a millionairess several times over, but her accessibility remains the lynchpin of her success.
Her latest venture is "Hannah Montana: The Movie," which since its release in the U.S. last month, has already grossed £45million.
It is sure to be another worldwide hit, but while the series could happily exploit the nonsensical premise that no one else realises that the be-wigged Hannah Montana is actually Miley Stewart, the film attempts to move the story on further by showing what happens when the secret gets out.
It stars Vanessa Williams (Ugly Betty) and Tyra Banks, with Miley/Hannah enjoying her first on-screen kiss (with newcomer Lucas Till), trying to outwit a sleazy tabloid journalist and belting out numbers in her inimitable fashion.
Miley says: 'It's not realistic for this kind of double-life to work. Anyone over the age of 14 is going to understand that. But while Hannah was the alter-ego who allowed Miley to live her dream, in the film they've melted together and it's ruining her life.
'She doesn't know who she is any more and she's trying to find herself. You can be five or 60 but still figuring out if you're really the person you've been called to be.'
The question of course is: who has Miley Cyrus been called to be? There's no doubt she was born with the showbusiness gene. Her father was a huge country music star whose biggest song, "Achy Breaky Heart", was a worldwide hit in 1992, the year of Miley's birth.
Though he was wary of letting his daughter get into showbusiness at an early age (and having suffered years of public abuse for his mullet hairdo; he was well-acquainted with the vagaries of fame), Billy Ray let her join him on stage.
'When I was four, my dad was performing with Aretha Franklin and, even though he made sure I was backstage with the nanny, I wanted to get up there and dance so much that I ran on to the stage. I was passed around all these great artists and Aretha held on to me so tight. All I wanted to do was entertain.'
Miley started to act before she was ten, winning parts in the Tim Burton movie "Big Fish", and "Doc", a series featuring her dad in the lead role. Aged 11, she auditioned for a new Disney show called Hannah Montana.
'I didn't get the role till two years later, so there was a long period of wondering whether it was going to happen for me. Luckily, it did.'
Although the success of the show has surpassed even Disney's expectations, Miley's fame has already produced its inevitable downside. Last year, a furore erupted around a set of photos, taken by Vanity Fair photographer Annie Leibovitz, which showed her naked but for a sheet around her body.
Though the photos were tame, the Lolita-style implications were clear, and Miley was forced to apologise as her wholesome image suffered a blow.
This year she apologised again when a private photo of her making a ' slanty-eyed' gesture surfaced on the internet, much to the consternation of race-relations groups in America. Everything Miley now does is open to scrutiny. It's an enormous pressure for anyone to withstand, let alone a teenager still finding her way.
'It's hard growing up in the spotlight,' she admits, 'and I'm changing. I can't be the 12-year-old who just moved to LA for ever. I'm having a great time doing what I do, but I'm also going to stumble and fall. Having my parents close helps.'
She adds: 'People mention child performers who have gone off the rails, but there are also stable people like Jodie Foster. She was a child star and look where she is now. She called to give me advice which was great.'
Moving from a backwater in Tennessee to the shark-infested boulevards of LA has produced its own set of challenges.
She says: 'It's harder finding people who are real - you don't know what's real and what's fake in this city because almost everyone has a motive and everyone wants to get something.
'So many tell me they are here for new show castings and they'll have their hair and make-up done, ready to be cast - yet they're just nine or ten years old. My sister Noah is nine and she's one of those girls. She'll come home and say: "Oh, I don't think the casting director thought I was pretty," which is heartbreaking.'
There have been other annoyances - namely the scrutiny given to her physical appearance. Despite being a tiny UK size 6, she says: 'People will say things like: "You've got to lose weight and be this smaller size to wear this dress." It's upsetting, but I'm happy with how I look.'
Internet gossip sites can be cruel - the most obvious offender being Perez Hilton, whose blog ritually castigates Miley Cyrus for no apparent reason.
'That can be painful,' she admits. 'That's just a mean person. I don't know how old he is, but taking it out on me is a little strange. It's like going back to high school.
'I get to travel and go to London and Paris, while this person sits by the computer writing mean things about me. I'd rather be the one travelling.'
Already acutely business-savvy, Miley knows her days as Hannah Montana are numbered, and she has already taken tentative steps out of the tween bubble.
Her next film, The Last Song, scripted by Nicholas Sparks ("The Notebook", "Nights in Rodanthe") will take her out of the Hannah Montana comfort zone, giving her the opportunity to prove that she can act a part that isn't essentially herself.
Her romance with Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers now over, she is dating 20-year-old model Justin Gaston.
Frequently referred to as a ' Bible-reading underwear model', Gaston is an extremely handsome and - in teenage terms, at least - much older boyfriend, proving that Miley Cyrus is growing up quickly.
'But I want to keep my virginity until I marry,' she explains solemnly. 'I was brought up in a Christian family.'
How her life will fare over the next decade only time will tell, but one hopes she will avoid the pitfalls to which many of her predecessors have succumbed.
Billy Ray vows that if Miley ever came to him and said: "Daddy, this is isn't fun any more. Can we go back to Tennessee?" - 'I'll be the first one in the truck.'
Somehow, you get the feeling they won't be driving back home for a long time yet.
Screenshot from "Hannah Montana: The Movie."
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