As Lizzie, Duff plays the typical American tween - except the actress is far from typical and, at age 15, she's no longer a tween.
Lizzie is insecure, maladroit, master of the Chevy Chase pratfall. She's neither the reigning brain nor beauty at her suburban school - the show was originally titled None of the Above - someone girls can identify with if they can identify with an adorable, famous, intensely photogenic millionaire actress/pop star/franchise who has dated tween heartthrob Aaron Carter.
It's a testament to Duff's acting and appeal that she convincingly portrays the awkwardness and everyday drama of those years of intense self-awareness. "We've taken the cutest, most adorable and sweetest girl in school and made her the vulnerable one," Marsh says.
"This girl was based on my own completely insecure childhood, searching for identity, and how I was going to get through being 13, 14 and 15 years old," says series creator Terri Minsky. "And I didn't know how I was going to get from one day to the next. But Hilary has taken it to a whole different level."
The show features a cartoon Lizzie who serves as her id, giving voice to her inner strong-willed self, a sneaky blackmailing younger brother, and, most shockingly of all, two parents married to each other and a close, nurturing mother-daughter relationship. Minsky, who has an 8-year-old daughter, says, "I was imagining the fantasy relationship of my daughter still needing me when she's a teenager."
To find the ideal Lizzie, Disney executives looked at hundreds of girls. "When Hilary walked in, it was like you were meeting Goldie Hawn at age 13," Minsky says. "She had such a light about her. For one day of my life I would like to look like that, but there's something instantly relatable about her."
