Teenager of the Year

The Duffs were born in Houston. Their father, Bob, co-owns a chain of convenience stores. Haylie started performing in preschool. Hilary soon followed suit, and after the pair were cast in a few commercials, their mother, Susan, decided to move them to Los Angeles for a pilot season. Susan Duff insists she has never been a showbiz mother and that the choice to perform was always the girls'. "My husband and I were never involved in anything artistic, so it was never anything we focused on," she says. The girls spent the next couple of years auditioning, with little to show for it.

Haylie: We worked on a pilot called The Underworld.

Hilary: Huh?

Haylie: Remember? The alien came through the window and ate us?

Hilary: Oh, my God! [Pause] No.

Haylie: You were probably nine.

Susan and the girls were ready to move back to Texas — where Bob Duff had remained, visiting L.A. every three weeks or so — when Hilary landed Lizzie McGuire. The show chronicles the travails of a lovable, put-upon junior-high student. Young girls quickly became enraptured with Duff. Expanding the franchise was inevitable.

Hilary met her music manager, Andre Recke, backstage at a Radio Disney concert in Anaheim, California. "I was never that into music," she admits. Still, Recke, a lanky German who had initially made his mark with boy-band merchandising rights in Europe, spotted a potential star. He hooked Duff up with a vocal coach, and soon she was recording a Christmas album. For Metamorphosis, Recke assembled a team of crack producers and songwriters — including the Matrix, who produced "So Yesterday." "I actually didn't want to have control of the writing on my first album," Duff says. "To write, you have to have time to connect with yourself. I don't have that time right now, because I'm so busy."

Duff says she listens to a wide range of music: Janis Joplin, Bob Dylan, Sublime, 50 Cent. Some other facts about her: She refuses to eat eggs, which she refers to as "pre-life." She and Haylie joke about opening a Texas steakhouse in L.A., even though the restaurant thing didn't work out so well for Britney Spears. "Didn't somebody find something in the food there?" Hilary asks. She's currently reading a book by a psychic who claims that babies who die from sudden infant death syndrome have actually done so by choice. She has also started Hillary Clinton's autobiography. Her favorite television shows are Sex and the City and Nip/Tuck. After our interview, Duff has a photo shoot. "Then I have to go home and clean my room," she says, sighing.

Metamorphosis is a slick collection of pop songs, master-crafted to appeal to huge numbers of young people, but the X factor, in the end, will be Duff herself and whether she, and not her Lizzie persona, will be appealing enough to sell the product.

I ask the girls, and then their mother, if the sexually provocative route taken by Spears and Christina Aguilera is a concern or a consideration. Hilary looks embarrassed and picks at her food. Haylie shrugs: "It's a choice. A career decision."

Later, Hilary says, "There was a tabloid rumor saying I was at White Lotus, doing tequila shots and showing off my new boob job. Hello!" She gestures at her chest, as if she's a magician showing off a conjured rabbit. Then she asks, "Have you been to White Lotus? It's a cool club in L.A. But I was in Petaluma at the time."

Susan seems annoyed by the question. "Hilary is personally a modest young woman. She does not need to go around exposing herself. What you see is what you get with Hilary, basically. It almost sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?"

In any case, the Duff juggernaut has only just begun, though the Lizzie McGuire series is over, after much-publicized tensions with Disney. (The Duffs claim Disney fumbled contract negotiations, then bad-mouthed the family in the press; sources say the Duffs demanded $100,000 per episode.) Coming soon: two movies (a Cinderella update and a remake of Cheaper by the Dozen), a WB special and a line of Duff merchandise, Stuff by Hilary Duff.

For most fifteen-year-olds, this all might be a bit much. But Duff seems unflappable. Backstage at the Teen Choice Awards, she is led to a VIP area, where the Teens' Choices grab a variety of gifts - among them, necklaces that spell cute messages in Morse code. She fingers several before making her choice. "I almost took 'effed up,' but I took 'sweet,' " she says, flashing her dimples. "I thought I'd be good."