LONDON - Miley Cyrus has become the youngest-ever star to receive Disney legend status. The singer rose to fame playing Hannah Montana in the Disney Channel series which first aired in 2006 when she was 13. In an emotional speech at fan convention D23 on Sunday night, Miley said she was “still proud to have been Hannah Montana”. She won her first Grammy earlier this year for Flowers, which was recognised as 2023’s record of the year and spent 10 weeks at number one in the UK. The 31-year-old received a standing ovation from the 12,000-strong crowd when she collected her award at the Honda Centre in Anaheim, California, home of Disneyland. She told the audience “a little bit of everything has changed” since her breakout role playing a teenager leading a double life as a pop star “but at the same time nothing has changed at all”. Miley was brought out on stage as country singer Lainey Wilson sang one of Hannah Montana’s most popular tracks, The Best of Both Worlds. She became emotional as she told the audience of her first performance as Hannah. “We needed footage of her playing sold out concerts but no-one knew who she, aka Miley, was,” she said. Tickets were given away at a shopping centre, she continued, “where I would have my first free concert”. “In reality I was a little girl in a blonde wig at the mall with a big dream. “But in my heart I was Hannah Montana and I was so proud to be,” she said.
“This award is dedicated to Hannah and all of her amazing, loyal fans, and to everyone who has made my dream a reality.
“To quote the legend herself, This Is The Life.” Miley also joked that she “definitely wasn’t created in a lab”, in a nod to rumours that Disney kids are created in the Californian Disney office. “If I was, there must have been a bug in the system which caused me to malfunction somewhere between the years of 2013 and 2016.” Miley left behind her Disney kid image with the 2013 released of her fourth album, Bangerz. In the same year she did a duet of We Can’t Stop with Blurred Lines singer Robin Thicke at the MTV VMAs.
