Hilary Ann Lisa Duff, an American actress and pop singer famous during the year of 2000, was born on September 28, 1987 in Houston, Texas. She is born to Bob Duff and Susan Duff, who is a producer. She has one older sister named Haylie Duff who is also an actress, works in music group Inventing Venus. At the age of six, Hilary and Haylie both participated in the ballet The Nutcracker Suite with Columbus Ballet Met in San Antonio. Since then Hilary really enjoyed performing in front of many people and subsequently decided to pursue an acting career, appeared in a few television commercials and began heading to auditions.

After such efforts, Hilary finally got her first role, which was in the 1997 TV mini-series "True Women." One year later, in 1998, she appeared as the star of that year video "Casper Meets Wendy" as the young witch Wendy with the animated character Casper the Friendly Ghost. Never let the year passed her by without did nothing, the next year in 1999 Hilary appeared as Ellie in the TV movie "The Soul Collector," for which she won a Young Artist Award for Best Performance in a TV Movie or Pilot for Supporting Young Actress resulted in her receiving rave reviews and recognition. This was the beginning of all for Hilary who soon came to her career breakthrough as the star of the successful Disney Channel show "Lizzie McGuire" in 2001, depicting the project's main role, Lizzie McGuire, a seventh grader encountering social problems with her schoolmates, teachers and family.

Her appearance in this show as a typical teenager preceded Hilary's appearances on the cover of teen magazines that made her highly popular among children between the ages of seven and fourteen. Surprisingly, in 2003 this Hollywood's babe announced that she would no longer act in the "Lizzie McGuire" show due to a contract dispute with Disney, in which she was paid $35,000 an episode to appear on the program, yet she was receiving millions of dollars to act in movies. Hence she turned her direction away, taking part in movie production and got her first movie role in an independent US/French co-production "Human Nature" released in 2001. Later, she got a chance to star in television movie entitled "Cadet Kelly" where she played along Christy Carlson Romano and Gary Cole. "Cadet Kelly" is a Disney Channel movie about a teenage girl being sent to military school. She is a New York "girlie girl", which makes the plot even funnier, as she tries to survive in the "battle."

Next, Hilary landed her feet on the 2003 hit movie "Agent Cody Banks". Released in the U.S. on March 13, the movie was of action genre that followed the adventures of 15-year-old Cody Banks, played by Frankie Muniz, who has to finish his chores, avoid getting grounded, and save the world by going undercover for the CIA. Adding more film projects to her resume, Hilary decided to one more time play her first million-dollar movie role, Lizzie McGuire in "The Lizzie McGuire Movie." At the end of 2003, she, along with Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt, played in the 20th Century Fox dramedy entitled "Cheaper by the Dozen" before then involved herself in "A Cinderella Story" alongside Chad Michael Murray with a salary of $2 million, and in "Raise Your Voice." As of November that year, her next film projects were planned to be "The Perfect Man" and "Outward Blonde," both anticipated to be released in 2005.

Acting career aside, Hilary also well known as a good singer. Her first recorded singing performance was on the song "I Can't Wait", which appeared on the "Lizzie McGuire Original Television Soundtrack" in 2002. In addition, she also sang on several other songs on the soundtrack to "The Lizzie McGuire Movie," including "Why Not", which was released as a single and had successfully reached the top 20 in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands. At first Hilary tried to record an album was a 2002 collection of Christmas songs called "Santa Claus Lane," which made the lower reaches of the Billboard 200 album chart and number 3 on the kids music chart in 2002. Though it didn't work well, at least the title track of the album had been featured on the soundtrack to "The Santa Clause 2" starring Tim Allen.

Later in 2003, Hilary recorded her another "first" album, entitled "Metamorphosis," which would appeal to teenagers as well as the tweens who had supported her to date. Released on August 26, the album smoothly rocketed to number one on US and Canadian charts in that year. Covered in the album was The Matrix, who had worked with singers such as Avril Lavigne on her "Let Go" album and Liz Phair, provided three songs on it. One of the three songs, "So Yesterday," released as the LP's first single successfully reached number 2 in Canada, topped 40 in Australia and just outside the top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. Such achievement brought "Metamorphosis" a nomination in the 2004 Juno Awards, Canada's version of the Grammys, for "International Album of the Year", losing to 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Tryin'". Still about her debut album, Hilary's video "Come Clean" was also got a nomination for Best Pop Video at the 2004 MTV Video Music Awards, brought the songbird herself to win the 2004 Kids' Choice Award for Favorite Female Singer and Best New Female Artist at the 2004 World Music Awards. What a good start?!

May 31, 2004 was the time when a video of her cover version of "Our Lips are Sealed" by The Go-Go's with her sister Haylie made its MTV debut. The song is from the soundtrack of "A Cinderella Story." Later, on September 28, Hilary released her self-titled effort, which promises her fans an edgier, rock feel into it. Moreover, the album's two singles "Fly" and "Haters" were believed to be about Lindsay Lohan, who is widely believed as Hilary's rival. Personally, Hilary once dated singer Aaron Carter, Backstreet Boys member Nick Carter's younger brother, in 2002. The two met on the set of "Lizzie McGuire," when Carter had a cameo role on a Christmas episode. Sad to say their relationship only lasted a year and a half. It was reported that Carter cheated on her with her best friend. He did sorry in the future, but that unfortunately couldn't end the feud between Duff and La-Lohan. After the bitter romance, the actress-singer dated Good Charlotte singer Joel Madden.

Singing aside, Hilary added one more movie project into her resume, the 2005 comedy "Cheaper by the Dozen 2", a 20th Century Fox production and is the sequel to the family comedy film "Cheaper by the Dozen" (2003) which she also starred in. Playing alongside the film original cast, Steve Martin, Bonnie Hunt, Piper Perabo, and Tom Welling, all of them reprised their roles as members of the twelve-child Baker family. The reviews were slightly negative, and thus plan for "Cheaper by the Dozen 3" was put off immediately. In between her hectic filming schedules, Hilary took time to the recording studio, worked on her fourth album "Most Wanted". Comprised her favorite tracks from her previous two albums, remixes, and new songs inspired by pop-rock musicians such as The Killers and Muse, the LP was quite a success, topped the U.S. album charts for two consecutive weeks, sold 1.3 million copies in the U.S. by March 2006. Greater than that, the lead single, "Wake Up", became the songbird's highest debut on the Billboard Hot 100 and her highest peaking single in the U.S., with its video received heavy rotation on MTV. The video for the second single, "Beat of My Heart", in addition, was also popular.

The 2006 satirical comedy "Material Girls" reunited Hilary and sister Haylie as wealthy siblings who must fight to reclaim their fortune following a scandal. This movie also was a flop, debuted at number nine on the weekend box office chart, grossing $4.62 million in its first three days of release. Then was billed to star in the 2007 computer-animated film "Foodfight!", she subsequently signed on to star in "Brand Hauser: Stuff Happens." Is a dark political satire starring John Cusack, Ben Kingsley, and Marisa Tomei among others, the movie is expected to be released in late 2007. In between her hectic schedules, Hilary, sadly, was faced with the down side of her life when she in November 2006 broke her relationship with boyfriend Joel Madden after more than two years dating, cited age difference as the reason. The following year, the beauty got back on the dating scene again as she found a new love in hockey player Mike Comrie.