You may think you know everything about Hilary Duff and her older sister Haylie from things you see on TV or read in the tabloids, but there's a lot more to them than meets the eye. Sure, their new comedy Material Girls probably won't appeal to anyone over the age of 16, but it did give them a chance to work together after doing the Ice Breakers commercial last year.
In the movie, they play wealthy sisters Ava and Tanzie Machetta, the heiresses to a cosmetics fortune who suddenly have to start doing everything for themselves when a scandal causes their business to collapse. It's directed by Martha Coolidge of Valley Girl fame.
ComingSoon.net spoke to the Duff Sisters on their recent visit to New York for the premiere of their new movie.
CS: Since you two live together, is it hard making a movie when you have to be on set all day and then see each other at home?
Haylie Duff: You know what? We live together, but we don't get to spend a lot of time together, because she tours a lot and I have been living in New York for a couple of months. Even before we did the movie, we were like on separate coasts a lot of the time. Getting to do the movie was exciting for us, because we actually got to spend a lot of time together.
Hilary Duff: We drove to work together. We shared a trailer. We really get along so well and we've always been really close, so I think we liked it. It's easy to have a sister there like a family member, for moral support and to be there to give you the direction or the opinion of a sister, because it always comes from a good place. You can't always do that with others actors, be like, "Hey, can you give me more energy or something?" You can't say that to another actor, but if it's your sister, it's good.
CS: But there's never that competitive nature to give your sister bad advice to make yourself look better?
Haylie: No, never!
Hilary: That's always the first question. People are like, "What do you guys fight about?" It's negative. We bicker because we're normal, but we never hog the camera or anything. Never!
CS: What kind of advice do you give each other while on set?
Hilary: Sometimes, Haylie would say to me like "This is a really important scene" or we might be working all day or something--she'd be like, "Let's go get some sugar" or like just pump up your energy somewhat. "I'm tired, can you give me a little bit more?" if I was like reading lines off camera. Sometimes, I would tell her like, "You're smiling too much or you need to be meaner." We totally just give each other advice.
Haylie: It's the small things.
CS: Are the characters you play at all based on the Hilton sisters?
Haylie: No, that was one thing that got started whenever the movie came out, is that everyone thought that these characters are based on them, but they couldn't be further from the two of them. These girls, yes, they inherited money, they were born into a privileged life, but it wasn't written about them or inspired by them or anything like that.
Hilary: The things we do like in the movie is not like what you see them out doing.
CS: Do you have any input into the rewriters on the script?
Haylie: We were there from the original script to the rewrite, and we never had any big problems with the script. Some of the things that we suggested were very small little changes, and most of it was just in like simple dialogue. It was never actually storylines. That's when we like to step back and know that our job isn't to be writers. It's to be actors and I think the writers--Amy and Jessica--they did such a wonderful job, and that's when you put yourself in other people's hands and let them do their job just like you want to be able to do your job.
CS: What are the major differences between you and your characters in the movie?
Hilary: There's a few. Like some of the similarities… Haylie and I are really close, obviously, and the girls are really close. They have each other's back, but there's a serious lack of responsibility with these girls and things that happen in real life that these girls don't know how to handle. They're like children. They've always had everything handed to them, so when they kind of lose everything, the stuff they have to deal with that's not that big of a deal, because everybody deals with it on a daily basis, they have no clue about how to get around or how to make things happen …
Haylie: Or clean their house.
Hilary: Yeah, there's a big separation in reality for these girls.
CS: Do either of you spend as much time on your Blackberries as your characters do in this movie?
Haylie: We are guilty of that.
Hilary: Most of it's work.
Haylie: Yeah.
Hilary: Mine is.
Haylie: We get a lot of stuff on email done. It's easier for us to do like our interviews and stuff like that. Instead of having to do phoners, we do them over email.
CS: Were those your personal Blackberries you used in the movie?
Hilary: Well, ours are not all bedazzled like the ones in the movie.
Haylie: We started taking our sim cards and putting them into the rhinestone ones, so like on the set, we could be like typing to each other.
CS: Is it true that you took director Martha Coolidge out clubbing one night to get her into the spirit of the movie?
Haylie: We took her out to a club called Element in L.A. At the time, it was like a really hot little club to go to. We filmed the movie there, actually. One of the club scenes is filmed there. We just took her out and actually we had Martha and some of the other producers of the movie and the two writers. We kind of wanted to show them what it was actually like to go and be around the people that we wanted the movie to be like, kind of that atmosphere.
Hilary: Even the backgrounds. Haylie and I would film a part in a club and they wouldn't be like, "What is it like? What are people like?" Not even people that were really in the scene, but just the background.
Haylie: Yeah, we didn't want people just like going like this. [does a really bad dance move] We wanted them to be doing specific things that you see all the time like the drunk girl. There's always the little things that we appreciate in movies. We wanted the background of the club to be really specific to what you see all the time.
CS: Hilary, can you talk about your post-Disney choices?
Hilary: Well, at the time, after I finished my TV show, most of it felt like I did three films, which was "A Cinderella Story," "Raise Your Voice" and "The Perfect Man." But they all happened back-to-back-to-back. I was really young at the time when I did those, and movies come out a year after they've been made. They seemed like a good fit at the time. They seemed appropriate and it was what was being offered to me and then we did "Material Girls" after that. I liked it because I got to work with my sister, and we had a lot of fun on the set.
Now, I'm doing a couple of movies that are completely different from what people really have seen me do. There's been movies that I could have done that I would have been a pregnant chick that's a drug addict and a junkie.
Haylie: Hey, don't talk bad about the pregnant girls!
Hilary: Because Haylie was pregnant on "7th Heaven." I mean, being pregnant, that's fine, but being pregnant and being a junkie, that whole thing. I don't know. I think there's so much time for that. There's been a big group of people that have like turned 18 and wanted to get so far away from what people might assume that they're like or that they can do, and it's shocking to me. It's like you're still so young! When I'm 25 or 30, I want to have some place to go, something that I've never done. Now, I think that I can start to challenge myself and do different things that maybe aren't for such a young audience, but I think it's important to not completely abandon them.
CS: Are you being pushed into that direction by agents, etc or is that your own choice?
Hilary: It's me. I don't have anyone around me that's pushing me into doing anything.
CS: Are there any actresses that inspire you or whose career you'd like to follow?
Hilary: I love Natalie Portman.
Haylie: Natalie Portman.
Hilary: Rachel McAdams.
Haylie: Mary Louise Parker. Elizabeth Perkins.
Hilary: Diane Lane. I think they're good. It comes with the whole package. The way that people think that they are, just like the way that they present themselves and the way they dress and the projects that they pick.
Haylie: Sandra Bullock.
CS: Have you had a chance to meet any of the ones you admired?
Hilary: Angelica Huston was one of them, so that was kind of surreal, getting to work with her.
CS: Haylie, how has it been doing "Hairspray" on Broadway?
Hilary: I don't know how she does it! I would be so nervous. You're so good.
Haylie: I love it. It's totally different. It wasn't something that as a kid, I dreamt of. I wasn't like, "I'm dying to be on Broadway." It wasn't a huge dream for me, just because I live in L.A. and there's not really a theatre community there. And it's really difficult to even find plays to do in L.A. So when I got the audition for it and I flew out here to watch the show with my mom, I sat there and I remember thinking, "This is so unbelievable!" I have to do this! I'm going to die if I don't get to be a part of this." I'm tired some days, but I'm passionate about every time I do it. The show is really magical, and it's a wonderful group of people.
CS: Earlier this year, you told MTV that you were just exhausted after having such a busy year, so how would you describe yourself now?
Hilary: I have gotten a little bit of time off. My goal was to take a couple of months off, and I got like half a month, kind of. I feel good right now. I think that when I have a lot of time off, which I haven't in a while, but assuming that when I have had two weeks off, I freak out. It's hard to relax because I know there's so much work to be done that It's hard for me sit down and turn on the TV and be content without getting up and doing things around my house. You know what I mean? I think that's just the personality that I have.
CS: What are you working on now?
Hilary: My single's coming out. I'm going to like premiere the video on TRL either today or tomorrow and then my album will be out in November and my fragrance comes out in September. We just launched a new clothing line.CS: How do you keep track of all these things?
Hilary: I try to focus on this record. I'm not going to shoot a movie. I'm going to get the record finished in September, and then all the stuff that has to go behind getting it put together, I don't have to be there for. I'll hear the tracks and I'll be in the studio when they're mixing it, but all the other stuff that they do, I don't have to be there for, so I have a couple of movies that I have to go out of town to film.Material Girls opens this Friday, August 18.
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YAY! She'll return to movies after completing this album!