Hilary Duff rose to fame at an early age as a child star following the success of her show Lizzie McGuire and later debuted in music, becoming one of the notable presences in 2010s pop culture.
The 38-year-old recently made her comeback to the music industry on her own terms, after taking more than a decade off to focus on her personal life and raising a family, and she can now retrospectively recognize the challenges she faced back then.
The Mature the hitmaker was honored at TIME 100 gala as one of the year’s most influential personalities, and during TIME 100 At the summit, Duff thought about revisiting her breakout era through documentaries like Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids’ TV and Framing Britney Spears.
“It’s been so long, but it’s an out-of-body experience. I think I feel really sad when I watch a lot of those documentaries for obvious reasons,” Roommates singer confessed.
The documentaries she mentioned focus on behind-the-scenes battles and exploitation of child stars who grew up at the same time as Duff.
Talking about the negative experiences of her fellow artists at the time, the Metamorphosis the singer shared that she feels “very grateful that I wasn’t put in too many positions that left me battle-scarred.”
Duff continued: “I’ve had a job as an adult since I was 9 years old. I had a very different upbringing, a lot of missed experiences, but also a lot of amazing [ones].”
Despite her gratitude for being shielded from the dark realities of the entertainment industry, Duff acknowledged that she learned to work like an adult even as a teenager. “I had to be able to hold my own in a room full of adults constantly and I was expected to show up and be professional. Through exhaustion or illness or whatever, just keep grinding.”
