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"  It&amp;#039;s not easy being a good girl in a Girls Gone Wild culture. Consider the case of Hilary Duff, who for the past half-decade has reigned supreme as the sweet and only occasionally sassy Lizzie McGuire on the Disney Channel show of the same name, which in reruns may outlive us all. &amp;quot;An icon for the training-bra set,&amp;quot; The New York Times called her. But Duff is almost 19 now. Wasn&amp;#039;t Britney making out with Madonna around that age? Wasn&amp;#039;t Christina Aguilera writhing around in rock videos proclaiming just how dirty she was?  As anyone who&amp;#039;s ever lived through junior high knows, the worst diss of all is simply being ignored. Duff&amp;#039;s films tend to get written off as simple family fare or worse. Her post-Lizzie pop music career has been a spectacular commercial success (her 2003 Metamorphosis went triple platinum), but other than making a lot of money, what&amp;#039;s the point if no one over the age of 17 will admit to being able to hum &amp;quot;So Yesterday&amp;quot;?  But it would be unwise to underestimate Ms. Duff. Her intriguing new movie, next month&amp;#039;s Material Girls, stars Hilary and her older sister, Haylie, as ditzy heiresses\u2014those naughty Hilton sisters, perhaps?\u2014forced to get real when the family cosmetics company comes under siege. And her fourth and most recent album, last year&amp;#039;s Most Wanted, is evidence of maturation of a different sort. She collaborated on three songs with her boyfriend of two years, Joel Madden, 27, lead singer of the punk-lite band Good Charlotte, an alliance that doesn&amp;#039;t quite jibe with Duff&amp;#039;s squeaky-tween image.  &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m good,&amp;quot; Duff says, taking a seat in the family&amp;#039;s beachside cabana. She&amp;#039;s reassuring me about the state of her health even though her light, girlish voice is thickened by a nasty head cold. &amp;quot;I just feel a bit underwater.&amp;quot; She looks lovely, though, her hair pulled back under her homage to a pith helmet\u2014sun and Cipro don&amp;#039;t mix\u2014revealing Chanel earrings and the delicate lines of her face and neck, her skin so translucent you could almost read her veins. The rest of her seems pared down as well, as if a sculptor chiseled away Lizzie&amp;#039;s baby fat to get at this lean young woman with visible muscles. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m girly, but I&amp;#039;m tough,&amp;quot; Duff says. (Of course her body has changed. &amp;quot;When she started Lizzie McGuire, I don&amp;#039;t think she&amp;#039;d even had her period back then,&amp;quot; her unofficial manager and mom, Susan Duff, 53, the family Minister of Too Much Information, tells me later.)  Hilary seems to be on the cusp between old-fashioned glamour queen and young girl on a beach trip. Even her domestic arrangements back in L.A. betray a sense of betwixt and between. Until recently, Duff lived with her mother and her indie actress (Napoleon Dynamite) sister, Haylie, 21, in the Valley. Four months ago, Susan moved out to give Haylie some age-appropriate breathing room. &amp;quot;My sister and I, the first week, we loved it,&amp;quot; Hilary says. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;This is awesome, so independent!&amp;#039; Since then, I&amp;#039;ve, like, spent the night in my mom&amp;#039;s house, in the bed with her, for a couple of days.&amp;quot; It was a similar tension that made Lizzie McGuire so compelling, torn as she was between a monster crush on a cute boy and the comforts of Mr. Snuggles, her favorite stuffed animal. Duff&amp;#039;s real life as a tween idol has its own dislocations.  &amp;quot;People think it&amp;#039;s all so easy,&amp;quot; she says in her usual calm, measured way. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m so sweet, and my life is just perfect. It&amp;#039;s not really like that. I mean, when you&amp;#039;re followed into the bathroom and someone sticks a camera under your stall! Not just paparazzi\u2014just people!&amp;quot; I mention the grumbling in teen chat rooms about Duff becoming standoffish with her followers. &amp;quot;You can&amp;#039;t be mad at them,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s not every day that they run into someone that has just popped out of their TV or off their magazine cover. But the second someone doesn&amp;#039;t get what they want, they get mean. And they don&amp;#039;t think that 200 other people have asked me for something that day.&amp;quot;  A Hilary Duff doesn&amp;#039;t happen by accident. Susan and Haylie give me the backstory of the showbiz family Duff. In grade school, Haylie decided she wanted to pursue acting professionally and Hilary wanted to do anything her sister did, so they persuaded Mom to take them to L.A. &amp;quot;My girls are very driven,&amp;quot; Susan says. &amp;quot;They want what they want.&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s not every mother who would split up a family to indulge the acting bug of a 10- and an eight-year-old. (Husband Bob stayed in Houston with his successful retail business and makes regular visits to California.) But it&amp;#039;s fair to say that Susan, from hardscrabble Texan roots, is comfortable with a bigger stage.  The Duff women moved into a studio apartment in a complex near Burbank locally famous for warehousing families striving to make it in the business. They took the game as seriously as anyone, including home schooling for the girls. &amp;quot;You don&amp;#039;t know how hard pilot season can be when you&amp;#039;ve got two kids doing it,&amp;quot; Susan says. &amp;quot;We were so regimented because we knew we had to get the schoolwork done first, from 7:30 a.m. to noon.&amp;quot; Where did that drive come from? &amp;quot;A little of it had to do with being told no so many times. I think of no as a maybe,&amp;quot; says Susan, fluent in the Texan dialect of steel magnolia.  Four years into the adventure, maybe became a big fat yes. Hilary &amp;quot;booked&amp;quot; Lizzie McGuire (the Duffs talk like agents; they never land a part, they &amp;quot;book&amp;quot; it) and then followed that two-year gig with pop stardom. Outsiders often assume the music was Disney&amp;#039;s bit of brand extension, but Susan assures me that she came up with the idea\u2014Hilary and Haylie had sung in a children&amp;#039;s choir, so why not?  Duff&amp;#039;s high, breathy singing voice is not, at first blush, distinctive. But unlike, say, Britney, who can sound positively computer generated, there is an ardor that shines through. &amp;quot;Her charisma translates on record,&amp;quot; says Charlie Midnight, a veteran Duff producer. &amp;quot;She sounds very personal.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;ll go out on a limb here: Her third album, 2004&amp;#039;s Hilary Duff, rocks. The rebel-chick attitude\u2014check out the miniskirt and knee-high stiletto boots in the CD photos\u2014is a pose, of course. (&amp;quot;Daddy, you know I&amp;#039;m always going to be your little girl,&amp;quot; Duff writes in the liner notes, &amp;quot;and we always work hard not to disappoint you.&amp;quot;) But it works.  &amp;quot;Haylie is my artistic, bohemian child,&amp;quot; Susan says, coolly assessing her daughters&amp;#039; gifts. &amp;quot;We think of Hilary more as a craftsman, someone who studies and learns, and I don&amp;#039;t think there&amp;#039;s anything wrong with that. Both Hilary and Haylie paint, but Hilary&amp;#039;s more formulaic in what she does.&amp;quot; (Thanks, Mom!) Is she always professional?, I inquire. &amp;quot;She can be a little mouthy to her mother,&amp;quot; Susan says.  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;d be kind of Stepfordish if she didn&amp;#039;t,&amp;quot; Haylie adds. &amp;quot;You get the &amp;#039;I&amp;#039;m 18!&amp;#039; line a lot.&amp;quot;  When I catch up with Hilary that evening, she&amp;#039;s sick and tired. Perhaps not the best time to bring up her film career, a priceless landscape of modest peaks (The Lizzie McGuire Movie retained some of the show&amp;#039;s charm; A Cinderella Story was sort of campy fun) and deep valleys (The Perfect Man, Raise Your Voice). Naturally, critics have been merciless, first among them The New York Times&amp;#039; Stephen Holden, who called her &amp;quot;the talent-challenged teenage goddess Hilary Duff.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;He doesn&amp;#039;t really fit the demographic,&amp;quot; Duff snaps. &amp;quot;So I could really care less. Look at me, and look at where he is\u2014sorry! Would he prefer that I take some super-adult role that is inappropriate so I would have no place to grow? Or does he just expect me to be an adult?&amp;quot; I take a mollifying long view: Regrettably, some critics do judge every teen flick as crap, when some of those films, such as Lindsay Lohan&amp;#039;s Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, satisfy both art and commerce.  She&amp;#039;s suspicious now: &amp;quot;Um, are you saying my movies are crap?&amp;quot; Suffice it to say that everyone from her mother to probably her chihuahua Lola recognizes that Hilary is entering a tricky, transitional phase in her acting career. She can&amp;#039;t play cute forever. In Material Girls, Hilary is the shier, more earnest heiress, which director Martha Coolidge believes taps into &amp;quot;a genuine side&amp;quot; of her. The chemistry between Duff and Coolidge (Valley Girl, Rambling Rose) was cool at best. &amp;quot;We weren&amp;#039;t screaming at each other,&amp;quot; Hilary says, &amp;quot;but sometimes there was an energy that wasn&amp;#039;t so good.&amp;quot; Coolidge professes ignorance of overt bad feelings but admits she never got close to her star. &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s put it this way,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;I have a son who is 17, and he and Hilary got along really well. But he&amp;#039;s a kid. She&amp;#039;s somewhere between a kid and a mogul.&amp;quot;  Pop star is Duff&amp;#039;s juiciest role so far. And she hasn&amp;#039;t gotten her due. &amp;quot;I feel like I do so much,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And it strikes me that I don&amp;#039;t hear myself on the radio. That critics don&amp;#039;t really talk about my music. I mean, a song like &amp;#039;Wake Up&amp;#039; [Wake up/ On a Saturday night] is not for a 50-year-old man with arthritis who doesn&amp;#039;t want to get out of bed.&amp;quot;  I suggest that her lack of radio play has more to do with the cold economic logic of the medium: Stations are shooting for listeners older than her tween base. &amp;quot;Um, sure,&amp;quot; Duff says. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t really care.&amp;quot; I feel a sudden twinge of empathy for parents of teenage daughters everywhere.  The next morning, I return to Casa Duff. Chatting with Susan, I hear shouting and yelping from the bedroom, the Duff girls&amp;#039; movable slumber party, followed by the sound of various decongestants going up Hilary&amp;#039;s nose. And then she emerges, a princess, her luxuriant hair released from yesterday&amp;#039;s sun bonnet, decked out in Juicy short shorts and slippers festooned with cut-glass jewels. &amp;quot;You like them?&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;They&amp;#039;re Giuseppe Zanotti.&amp;quot;  It&amp;#039;s time to talk boys. About the tabloid feud with Lindsay Lohan over singer Aaron Carter (overlapping 2002 romances, oh dear), the less said the better. &amp;quot;Now there&amp;#039;s so much that&amp;#039;s been put between her and me,&amp;quot; Duff says, &amp;quot;that if I saw her, I&amp;#039;d never say hi because it&amp;#039;s so awkward.&amp;quot; The real boy in question is all grown up\u2014the much-tattooed Madden, her shelter from L.A. glitter world. As a romantic choice, this is Hilary going off-script. &amp;quot;He doesn&amp;#039;t socialize,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;He&amp;#039;s very real, like, he&amp;#039;s from a pretty ghetto place in Maryland. He&amp;#039;s a strong believer in God. I like that.&amp;quot;  Naturally, I&amp;#039;d gotten the lowdown from Susan first. &amp;quot;I could just see him taking my precious, perfect, sweet little child to the tattoo parlor,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;And if you print that and not the whole story, I&amp;#039;ll hunt you down, and I&amp;#039;m from Texas.&amp;quot; Okay, she&amp;#039;s warmed to Madden, and on the usually vexed subject of older boyfriends and sex, she&amp;#039;s reassured: &amp;quot;The truth is,&amp;quot; she says, &amp;quot;Hilary is a very chaste young woman.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s hard having a boyfriend who&amp;#039;s older because people just assume,&amp;quot; Hilary says. &amp;quot;But [virginity] is definitely something I like about myself. It doesn&amp;#039;t mean I haven&amp;#039;t thought about sex, because everybody I know has had it and you want to fit in. But when they talk about it, it doesn&amp;#039;t sound special, like you would imagine it to be. It just seems like everybody has slept with each other\u2014you know what I mean.&amp;quot;  She&amp;#039;s talking about old friends in Texas, but merry-go-round sex is an occupational hazard in Hollywood as well. What&amp;#039;s it like for Duff to have never dated Wilmer Valderrama, paramour to the likes of anyone you can think of, including Lohan? &amp;quot;Well, I can&amp;#039;t say it&amp;#039;s nice,&amp;quot; she replies, &amp;quot;because Wilmer is a good guy. But it would be weird to be with someone who&amp;#039;s dated so many people. Do you think I&amp;#039;m missing out?&amp;quot;  I enjoyed last night&amp;#039;s resentful teen who made it forever impossible for me to think of her as a Stepfordian Disney clone. But now she&amp;#039;s been replaced by a supremely confident young woman, playful, even a little flirty. Doubtless, she&amp;#039;ll navigate the shoals of romance with the cautious intelligence she brings to her career. &amp;quot;Suppose the next thing I did was this superedgy independent movie where I was pregnant or shooting up,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;What would that do to my fan base?&amp;quot;   &amp;quot;Well, you&amp;#039;ll outgrow those tweens soon enough,&amp;quot; I say.   &amp;quot;Or they&amp;#039;ll grow with me,&amp;quot; she says. I realize that what&amp;#039;s missing in Duff&amp;#039;s princessy movie roles is the cartoon alter ego that Lizzie McGuire carried around on her shoulder like a mordant, so &amp;quot;over it&amp;quot; Jiminy Cricket. &amp;quot;&amp;#039;Animated Lizzie&amp;#039; was quirkier, a little wittier,&amp;quot; Duff says. &amp;quot;I always feel I&amp;#039;ve got an animated Hil who says the things I want to say but can&amp;#039;t. Aren&amp;#039;t you in situations where you feel like saying something but...&amp;quot;   &amp;quot;I usually just say it.&amp;quot;   &amp;quot;Lucky you. I&amp;#039;m not in that situation.&amp;quot; Not yet. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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