Miley's new Harper's Bazaar interview is turning heads. Here's the article below:
The Real Miley Cyrus
Despite the stresses of the spotlight, the Disney star made good is growing up gracefully. See her most memorable red-carpet looks.
For Miley Cyrus, who just turned 17, life is easily divided by fame. There are the 13 years before she was famous, and then there's everything since. BF (Before Fame), sold-out crowds and red-carpet events were the domain of her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, and his achy-breaky heart. "I remember so many times when I was younger being like, Why does Dad sleep so much when he's home from the road?" she says. "Why doesn't Dad want to play? Now I'm starting to get it. When I come home from the road, the first thing I do is grab my baby sister [Noah Lindsey, 10] and hold her for as long as she'll let me."
These days, though, it's all about Miley. Ever since she signed on to play an alter-ego version of herself called Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel four years ago, she has been crazy famous, her adolescence chronicled by the paparazzi, her every tweet dissected—before she deleted her account. (She was fed up with her posts becoming fodder for gossip sites.) "Everything is so dramatic in this world," she says from an ugly little room at a coliseum on Long Island where she's on tour and just finished a sound check. Tonight's show, like all of her performances lately, is sold out.
Despite her huge success (People has estimated the value of the Miley "franchise" at $1 billion), growing up in the spotlight has been bumpy. There was the headline-making Annie Leibovitz photograph for Vanity Fair of Miley wrapped in a bed sheet (and little else) that sent parents into all sorts of a huff. "Here, my parents are thinking they're seeing a beautiful picture by a major photographer, and the people of America want to see something dirty in that?" says Miley, who is dressed simply in a huge gray T-shirt and narrow little jeans tucked into a pair of flat boots. "It doesn't make sense to us because [my family] doesn't look for negativity. But people don't want to say 'What a great performance' or 'What a great shot.' No one wants to look at something like that and see the positive because it doesn't sell a magazine."
And what about that pole dip performed atop an ice-cream cart at last August's Teen Choice Awards that was compared to a stripper move? A manager, in protective mode, offers to intervene, but Miley waves him off. Despite having a series of nervous handlers ready to jump in at the slightest hint of trouble, she can, clearly, handle herself. "People like controversy because that's what sells," she says with resignation.
"My job is to be a role model, and that's what I want to do, but my job isn't to be a parent," she says. "My job isn't to tell your kids how to act or how not to act, because I'm still figuring that out for myself. So to take that away from me is a bit selfish. Your kids are going to make mistakes whether I do or not. That's just life."
And Miley is ready to grow up. She'll film the fourth and final season of Hannah Montana this year, and she's already made a proper adult film, The Last Song (due this April), based on a Nicholas Sparks novel, in which she stars as a rebellious teen reconnecting with her father (Greg Kinnear). "People will be really surprised when they see it," she says proudly. "It's pretty deep. I want to do edgier movies—movies where you walk away feeling fulfilled." The film was shot on Tybee Island, Georgia, over the summer, and Miley managed to shoo the paparazzi away and have a regular teenage summer.
"I got on the plane [to Georgia], and I was lying in my mom's lap and crying and saying, I'm so happy to be getting out of L.A.," Miley says. In Tybee, "I went out every night with my friends. I did karaoke. I danced. All this stuff would've been such a big deal in Los Angeles: Who's she with? Why is she dancing? I felt alive and real. It's so much easier to know who you are when there aren't a thousand people telling you who they think you are. I felt like I was really figuring myself out. Usually I have someone whispering in my ear, but I was on my own.
"I never felt at home anywhere," she continues. Of Nashville, her hometown, Miley says, "I almost felt like I didn't belong because no one understood the singing or the acting. They thought it was glamorous, but they didn't see that it was work. I knew it was hard work because of my dad, and I never wanted that. I wasn't stoked to walk a carpet because that just seemed normal to me. The fun part was the touring, being on the bus. I love looking out at 27 semis and being like, every single one of those semi trucks is there to put together my stage."
Outside the coliseum today, there are at least that many trucks, and there are also her fans, streaming through the parking lot holding hands with their moms, their dads, their teenage sitters. A lot of them are wearing pink: pink fleece jackets, pink hooded sweatshirts, pink elastics in the braces on their teeth. Some have even etched their adoration in markers and glitter and puffy paint: I LOVE MILEY!! and hearts and rainbows and unicorns and stars.
Miley's own look is slightly tougher (though her face is that of a cherub, and it's only so tough you can look with eyes as wide as hers). Her hair is a long brown tangle of extensions, and in the side of her nose is a teeny-tiny speck of gold. (The nose piercing is a rare exception to her no-pain policy.) A minor scandal recently erupted when a photographer caught a bit of ink peeping out of Miley's bikini top: Is that a tattoo? Is it real? On a Disney star? In fact, Miley's parents and older brother Trace all have multiple tattoos, but she has only one, and it's brand-new: JUST BREATHE etched below her heart. The script handwriting is her mother's, and the meaning is significant: One of Miley's closest friends died of cystic fibrosis in 2007, and both of her grandfathers died of lung cancer. "It reminds me not to take things for granted. I mean, breathing—that was something none of them could do, the most basic thing," she says. "And I put it near my heart, because that is where they will always be."
But what about the pain? Miley is famously needle phobic. "It really doesn't hurt if you're thinking about the meaning," she says. "I could never get a meaningless tattoo, but I think that if you're doing something that's important, that's significant in your life, it takes some of the pain away."
Still, moms are quietly shuddering, hoping their little girls don't run down to the tattoo parlor. After all, throngs of tweens copy Miley's every eyeshadow choice. But despite all the adoration, Miley has had her share of insecurities. "I used to ask everyone all day, 'Do I look pretty?' I probably asked that question about as many times as I blink," she admits. In Georgia, she finally got over it. "It's not because I started feeling beautiful; it's just because I was comfortable. I was so used to the paparazzi and the cameras and the 'What are you wearing?' and having people stare at me."
That's not to say she doesn't care about style—and a YouTube search will turn up a video of Miley sorting though her enormous walk-in closet. "I'm a bit of a tomboy," she says. "I love to shop, but I get really claustrophobic. I get headaches. I like to just go into one place and raid it and let that be it for a while." Her favorite store? "Barneys. You can go on one floor and find a really great bag that's like Prada or Gucci, or you can go up to the Co-op and find Marc by Marc Jacobs or Splendid tees." She loves Loree Rodkin jewelry piled over plain Hanes T-shirts. "I thought it was so cool when girls would ask me, What's your shirt? And I'm like, Hanes, but I have $60,000 worth of jewelry on top of it!"
Miley has stepped into the fashion world herself, working with designer Max Azria on a line of clothes for Walmart. "We look at what I wear, and then we try to make it for $16. Let's say I'm wearing shoulder pads on the red carpet; we'll do that. It's nothing you've ever seen in Walmart before!" she says, sounding every bit the exuberant teenager.
But there's more Miley to come, and the next Miley the world sees may not be the girl who belts out "Party in the U.S.A." from a sparkly microphone. She's getting more involved in the world: She recently teamed with Youth Service America to launch geturgoodon.org, an online meeting place for kids who want to do good. Pick up some trash, for example, make a video, and share it on the site. She's also working to provide funds to teens whose projects are more ambitious than their means. And, most of all, Miley is looking forward to breaking out of the teenybopper scene. "I'm doing a record right now that's another pop record, and then I want to come out with an album that's really who I am." She pauses. "I don't know exactly who that is yet."
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