The 17-year-old singer and actress has just driven in from Venice Beach, where she was working all day in a recording studio. She’s taller than one expects, and much of that height is taken up by her long legs, which the whole restaurant noticed when she loped toward our table in a pair of ultra-short white shorts. “I am not a doll, and people want to treat me that way,” she continues in that distinctive voice of hers—slightly hoarse yet hitting all its notes. She fiddles with her thick braid. “They say, ‘Now this is what we need to do to your makeup, and this is what I want you to wear,’ and I’m like, ‘Dude, I choose.’ When I was 12, that was okay. But I’m older now. I have an opinion. I have my own taste.”
Yet, because the Disney Channel has been so successful in branding and boxing her in as the bubbly embodiment of its
Hannah Montana
franchise, it’s hard not to think of Miley as a durable good. The TV show—about a girl who leads a secret double life as a pop star—and its records, concert tours, books, clothing, and lunch boxes have earned more than $1 billion since the series first aired in 2006. This year marks Miley’s final season as Hannah. Does it feel like she’s saying farewell to a friend?
“I’m not sure. What I am sure about is I’m going to rejoice and be happy to finally not have to be…well, to not be somebody I’m not exactly,” she says, choosing her words carefully. “As I’ve grown into it, I’ve grown out of it. Does that make sense? When I was 12, I thought, ‘I want to be famous all the time! I want everybody to recognize me!’” she drawls, falling into an exaggerated version of the Southern accent of her Tennessee childhood. Miley was raised outside Nashville by her dad, singer Billy Ray Cyrus, and her mom, Tish, both of whom have been instrumental in guiding her career. Dolly Parton is her godmother. “Now I just want to be chill and have my private life,” she insists. “When they’re putting me in sparkles and in pink this final season, I have to grit my teeth. I can’t breathe looking like that anymore. A friend came by the set one day and said, ‘You don’t look very happy.’ I said, ‘I’m feeling claustrophobic in all these frills.’”
Miley’s new maturity—and, yes, depth—will be on display when her new movie opens on March 31. In
The Last Song
, she plays a girl with divorced parents—a much darker and angrier character than Hannah—who falls in love for the first time.
During filming, Miley fell in love for the first time herself, with co-star Liam Hemsworth. Gushing about the 19-year-old Aussie, she pulls up a photo of the two of them on her cellphone and tells me she’s flown to Australia to meet his family. “He’s my first serious boyfriend,” she says.
“Well, take that, Nick Jonas and Justin Gaston,” I say, naming two past beaux.
“I know. But Nick and I were so young,” she says. “We really did have a genuine love, but it wasn’t like this. We met when I was 12. I didn’t know who I was. I know who I am now and am so content and full of purpose.” And model Justin Gaston? “He was a good person, so carefree. All I know is that I am so happy right now. I wasn’t last summer after I called it off with Justin and went away to film
The Last Song
. I cried all the way there. The last thing I was expecting to do was to fall in love. I went there thinking the summer was about me and getting focused on my career. But I guess God was like, ‘Girl, here is this amazing guy.’”
Miley’s ease with talking about God points to another aspect of her life—her faith. Before her family moved to L.A. in 2005, she was baptized in a Southern Baptist church as a kind of spiritual insurance policy against big-city life. Yet she no longer frequents church these days.
“My faith is very important to me,” she says. “But I don’t necessarily define my faith by going to church every Sunday. Because now when I go to church, I feel like it’s a show. There are always cameras outside. I am very spiritual in my own way. Let me make it clear, though—I am a Christian. Jesus is who saved me. He’s what keeps me full and whole. But everyone is entitled to what they believe and what keeps them full. Hopefully, I can influence people and help them follow the same path I am on, but it is not my job to tell people what they are doing wrong.”
Is it hard being openly Christian in Hollywood?
“People are always looking for you to do something that is non-Christian,” she answers. “But it’s like, ‘Dude, Christians don’t live in the dark.’ I have to participate in life. If I wear something revealing, they go, ‘Well,
that’s
not Christian.’ And I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m going to go to hell because I’m wearing a pair of really short white shorts.’ Suddenly I’m a slut. That’s so old-school.”
The most heated controversy Miley has faced was over her performance at last summer’s Teen Choice Awards, during which she danced on an ice-cream cart and against a pole as if she were a stripper. Many, particularly parents with young daughters, were outraged—including Mika Brzezinski.
“Who’s she?” Cyrus asks.
“She’s the co-host of
Morning Joe
on MSNBC,” I say. “She became kind of a public scold over your performance. What would you like to say to her and to others who accused you of crossing a line?”
Miley flicks her braid over her shoulder, ready for battle. “My impulse is to say, ‘Get off my case, Mika. Get over it.’ But then I think, ‘Well, that makes me just like her. I’m acting just like everyone else who has some kind of chip on their shoulder.’ My job first is to entertain and do what I love, and if you don’t like it, then change the channel. I’m not forcing you to watch me. I’m not forcing you to talk about me. I would do that pole dance a thousand times again, because it was right for the song and that performance. But, dude, if you think dancing on top of an ice-cream cart with a pole is bad, then go check what 90% of the high schoolers are really up to. It’s funny. I don’t know if a lot of parents remember what they were like as kids. But I’m like, ‘Dude, as if you were an angel!’”
She sighs. “I’ve learned I can’t live for what people are going to say. People are so judgmental—especially parents. You can say what you want about mine,” she says, “but I think the world of my mom and dad. They are the best. I am not afraid to tell them anything. Sometimes they’ll say, ‘Miley, we’re not completely stoked about your decisions,’ but at least they’re not worried at 3 in the morning, wondering where I am. It’s all about communication. I don’t care what stories are written about me or what other parents think, because I know how close I am with my parents.”
“Do you ever resent being perceived as your family’s main breadwinner?” I ask her.
“Sometimes, but my thing is more like I want to take care of them as long as I can, because they sacrificed so much for me. My mom drove me to so many dance classes and choir lessons. I never want her to have to work. I just want to take care of her.”
Miley made another decision that reinforces she’s no longer a kid. In 2008, she legally changed her name to Miley Ray—she was born Destiny Hope. What are the newly minted Miley’s hopes? “I want to travel more,” she says with enthusiasm. “I’ve traveled to a thousand million places, and I haven’t really seen any of them because I’m always in a hotel.” With that, she says goodbye and lopes away. She has so many places to go.
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