Magazine | Hilary Duff Love

Hilary Duff Is What Dreams Are Made Of

I’m waking up to a dream sequence. Her team told me this would be audio only because of her frenetic travel schedule. She’d just landed in Auckland for the New Zealand and Australia leg of her tour. Then the name Hilary pops up on the Zoom, she turns on her camera, and I see the most bubbly ball of energy, with her long, sun-streaked locks in loose waves. I freak out. The camera stays on for the whole hour, and it feels like chatting with a bestie. She’s completely locked in, letting her hair down, and I get to ask her all the questions I’ve always dreamt about asking her, probably on behalf of all the fans of our generation who grew up with her.

Though technically, this is our second meeting. In 2014, I brought a first date to her “All About You” premiere, crashed her step-and-repeat pretending to be press, and had him snap our photos. When he asked to see me again, I apparently replied, “can you send me my photos with Hilary?”

Back then, I had no idea the girl in my photos was, in her words, “hanging on by a thread.” Now, more than a decade later, she’s pulled off the pop comeback of the year. Her album luck… or something debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200, her highest-charting album since 2007, and she’s played 50 shows so far, many of which sold out in hours. She’s already done New York and London, two cities straight out of “Wake Up,” and Paris is coming in May. Maybe Tokyo? Her crowds are full of the same queer kids from 2004, now adults in butterfly clips and baggy jeans. (She’s been a ride or die for our community since her iconic “That’s So Gay” PSA.) And let’s be clear, she’s not a nostalgia act. Everyone in the audience knows the new album too.

The thing about Hilary is that she was one of the biggest child stars of a generation, and that didn’t come with any guarantee she’d come out the other side in one piece. Playing Lizzie McGuire gave her everything and took a lot out of her. She remembers thinking, “I’m fucking done with you. I want people to see me.” She adds, “It was so weird being a child star and trying to cross that bridge into adulthood, being taken seriously, coming off Disney Channel.” She yearned to break free from a character that never grew up.

And she did. Hilary is proof the role that made you doesn’t have to be the one that defines you.

On her own terms, she made the most honest album of her career, about marriage, desire and the parts of growing up nobody warns you about. She let us into the messy, complicated parts, and we saw ourselves in them. Today, she finally feels the respect from the industry, including from people she felt were hard to please her entire career. Hilary thought she was healing herself, but in the process, she healed us too.

She’s also made peace with the internet turning her most earnest moments, like the “With Love” dance and that PSA, into memes. The gays turned them into camp classics, out of love. “Now I’m like, oh, got it,” she says. “I can play along, too.”

Is it luck? She’d say so. But a lot of it is something of her own: smart decisions, and the family she built, which gave her the foundation to say, “I don’t give a fuck.”

“I really do mean it to inspire people who feel stuck, or who haven’t done something they wanted to,” she says. And she’s not done. She’s already planning more music as she takes the tour around the world, and she’s eyeing a return to acting, whether a book adaptation, a limited series or a movie. “Now that I know that I can.”

Photoshoots > Sessions in 2026 > Set #013

Magazine Scans Additions

I’ve added 29 magazine scans. Previews and gallery links below.

Magazine Scans > Scans from 2004 > Hollywood Life – October 2004
Magazine Scans > Scans from 2008 > Allure – May 2008
Magazine Scans > Scans from 2010 > Lucky – May 2010
Magazine Scans > Scans from 2022 > Women’s Health – May 2022

Women’s Health UK – August 2022

Hilary was on the cover of Women’s Health UK. Scans are now up in the photo gallery. Sorry that these weren’t posted sooner.

Hilary Duff Covers Women’s Health May 2022

The actress spent years trying to live up to Hollywood’s standards. Now she’s focused on what makes her feel happy and whole and content—on the inside.

“I have an idea…” says Hilary Duff’s 3-year-old daughter, Banks, her finger tapping her mouth. “Can I have a treat?” The child tilts her blonde head to one side as her mother looks upon her with amusement. “Did you eat any vegetables for lunch?” Hilary asks. Banks says yes, though her mother suspects otherwise. But who can deny a little indulgence in the face of such ingenuity?

Banks scampers out of view on Zoom, and Hilary, left alone in her bright and airy bedroom, shakes her head affectionately. At 34 years old, she’s the mother of three children. Besides Banks, she has son Luca, 10, from her previous marriage to retired hockey player Mike Comrie, and daughter Mae, 1. When Mae was born, the baby took over her office, so now Hilary’s bedroom is her last sanctuary. She worries her days in this house are numbered—her family, which also includes musician husband Matthew Koma, three dogs (including a 130-pound Saint Bernard), and seven chickens, has outgrown it. “We’re busting at the seams here,” she says. “You should see my garage. It’s stroller and car-seat city, scooters everywhere.”

But this is the house where she recovered from her 2016 divorce, where she learned to parent Luca as a single mom, where she eventually wed Koma on the front lawn, and where their girls were born. It’s hard to leave a place that’s held such joy. And food is a big source of that happiness. “We eat butter in this house, and olive oil, and sodium, and sugar,” says Hilary, taking a bite of a turkey, arugula, and pickle sandwich. A deviled egg, which she made this morning because her chickens are laying, waits on her plate as Mom’s version of a treat.

“I’ve gotten to a place of being peaceful with the changes my body has gone through.”

Hilary’s appeal as an actress has always been her easy familiarity. As a child star on Lizzie McGuire, she was the quintessential everygirl, as warm as she was vulnerable. After years of being identified with the character, and multiple passes on offers to reboot her, she agreed to revisit Lizzie in a series for Disney+. The project tanked when Hilary and the network differed on their vision for adult Lizzie. “She had to be 30 years old doing 30-year-old things,” Hilary says she insisted, pushing for a more mature Lizzie. “She didn’t need to be doing bong rips and having one-night stands all the time, but it had to be authentic. I think they got spooked.”

Standing her ground meant the project fizzled, which cleared the path for How I Met Your Father. You could see how her character, Sophie, swirling in realistic singledom, would be friends with a grown-up Lizzie. “It would be dumb of me to not know that I have a sweet spot playing that relatable girl,” she says. “I am that girl.” Even as a kid trying to separate herself from the character who made her famous, she managed to hold on to her optimism. “It was a conscious choice not to be angsty and try to shift people’s opinions on who I am,” she says, laughing. “That doesn’t mean I didn’t want to try!”