Entertainment
Miley Cyrus says playing Hannah Montana gave her an ‘identity crisis’: ‘I really had to break that’
Miley Cyrus has opened up about the ‘identity crisis’ she went through after playing Hannah Montana, admitting the character was so much a part of her that she worried people ‘wouldn’t care’ about her without the wig.
The singer, 28, starred as Hannah Montana on the Disney Channel from 2006 until 2011 and admitted it had an impact on how she saw herself.
She explained on Spotify’s Rock This with Allison Hagendorf: ‘Talk about an identity crisis.
‘[I was] a character almost as often as I was myself, and actually, the concept of the show is that when you’re this character, when you have this alter ego, you’re valuable.
‘You’ve got, like, millions of fans, you’re the biggest star in the world, and then the concept was that when I looked like myself, when I didn’t have the wig on anymore, no one cared about me, I wasn’t a star anymore.
‘So, that was drilled into my head. Like, without being Hannah Montana, no one cares about you. And that was the concept.’
The Mother’s Daughter star admitted she ‘really had to break that’ mentality, which began with her image transformation for her album Bangerz.
During that album era, Miley cut her hair short and was often found twerking with a foam finger, which was her way of distancing herself from her previous clean-cut image.
She explained: ‘I really had to break that and I think that’s maybe why I almost created a characterised version of myself at times.
‘I never created a character where it wasn’t me, but I was aware of how people saw me and I maybe played into it a little bit.’
Miley has previously said she worried she’d ‘never amount to the success of Hannah Montana’ again in her career, but ‘had to evolve’ to find herself and her lane in music outside of the character.
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