Hilary Duff Tries to Grow Up
Thursday, July 17, 02:31 PMThe hardest part about being a teen pop icon is making the transition to adult pop icon. With A Cinderella Story, Hilary Duff, the 15-year-old former star of Lizzie McGuire, grows up just a little in this comic updating of the fairy tale: She's in high school, all angsty and stuff. But the task of maturing Duff's Lizzie image is no laughing matter: Soon after Duff shoots this scene with actor Dan Byrd, her acting coach, Troy Rowland, worries that she sounds too McGuire-ish. ''Did you tell her to take it down an octave?'' he asks producer Dylan Sellers. ''Is she Lizzie?'' Sellers assures him, ''She wasn't Lizzie.'' Days earlier, Coach Rowland prepped her for a crying scene with Erin Brockovich clips. ''This is the moment that won Julia Roberts the Oscar.... You can be that -- or you can be just 'okay.''' Duff, who says that Lizzie was ''so close to me in real life,'' admits her Cinderella role has been a bit of a stretch: ''I'm hyper; she's more calm, reserved. It's definitely a challenge.''
