Hilary Duff opens up about dealing with 'tough' situations as child actor

Hilary Duff rose to fame at an early age as a child star after the success of her show Lizzie McGuire and later making her debut in music, and becoming one of the notable presences of the 2010s pop culture.

The 38-year-old recently made her comeback to the music industry on her own terms, after taking more than a decade off to focus on her personal life and build a family, and she can now retrospectively recognise the challenges she faced then.

The Mature hitmaker was honoured at the TIME100 gala as one of the most influential personalities of the year, and during the TIME100 Summit, Duff reflected on revisiting her breakout era through documentaries like Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV and Framing Britney Spears.

“It's such a long time ago, but it's an out-of-body experience. I think I feel really quite sad when I watch a lot of those documentaries for obvious reasons,” the Roommates songstress confessed.

The documentaries she mentioned focus on behind-the-screen struggles and exploitations of child stars who were growing up at the same time as Duff.

Speaking about the negative experiences of her fellow artists at the time, the Metamorphosis singer shared that she feels “very grateful that I wasn't put in too many positions that left battle wounds on me.”

Duff continued, “I have held a job as an adult since I was 9 years old. I had a very different upbringing, a lot of missed experiences, but also a lot of amazing [ones].”

Despite her gratitude for being protected by the dark realities of the entertainment industry, Duff acknowledged that she learnt to work like an adult even as a teenager. “I had to be able to hold my own in a room full of adults constantly, and was expected to show up and be professional. Through exhaustion or sickness or whatever, just keep grinding.”