Things You Never Knew...

Taken from the New York Times, Thursday 20 April 2006. Yes, that bastion of incisive journalism.

The moment that 13-year-old Miley Cyrus knew for sure that her life had taken a surreal turn happened just a few weeks ago, when her 6-year-old sister, Noah, sheepishly told her that she had entered a contest on the Disney Channel Web site to win backstage passes to a concert featuring the network's newest star. It was Miley.

''You live with me!'' Miley said she told her sister, before issuing a warning: don't even think about swiping anything from my bedroom to sell on eBay.

It sounded like something that might happen to Hannah Montana, the character Miley plays on the new hit Disney series of the same name. The half-hour sitcom is about a 14-year-old girl (named Miley Stewart), regarded by many of her middle-school peers as an outcast geek, who has a secret identity by night as the pop sensation Hannah Montana. (Imagine Britney Spears, only more chaste.)

The series' premiere episode received an enormous boost on its opening night, March 24, by being packaged as the lead-in to an encore showing of the movie ''High School Musical,'' the most-watched film in the 23-year history of Disney Channel. That night, with Corbin Bleu (Chad) of ''High School Musical'' as a guest star, ''Hannah'' attracted 5.4 million viewers. Since then, in its regular time slot (Fridays at 7 p.m. Eastern time), the show has drawn an average of more than 3.5 million viewers, most of them 6 to 14, making it the most popular show among so-called tweens on basic cable television nearly every week it has run.

Little wonder that Disney has already asked the producers of ''Hannah,'' who include two veterans of the sitcom ''Murphy Brown,'' to add 6 episodes to the 20 that were already scheduled for the first season. Believing that ''Hannah'' could also serve as a marketing platform akin to ''Lizzie McGuire,'' the Disney Channel series that catapulted Hilary Duff to stardom and that spawned a cottage industry, Disney is also planning a ''Hannah'' soundtrack album, to be released in the fall, a Miley Cyrus album for early next year and, in all likelihood, a line of accessories that would probably include ''Hannah'' clothing.

Miley -- who was born Destiny Hope Cyrus, but who has long preferred her nickname (Smiley Miley) -- beat out more than 1,000 aspirants for the coveted role of Hannah, though she had little dramatic experience beyond some acting lessons and scattered roles in school plays in her native Nashville.

What ultimately won her the job, the producers and network executives say, was her cool confidence (a quality that stopped well short of cockiness), her intuitive comic timing (which seemed, at least to the older adults, evocative of what a teenage Lucille Ball might have been like) and a husky singing voice not unlike Mary Chapin Carpenter's. In the bargain, Miley, who sings the show's theme song, was able to infuse Hannah with a real-life sense of the joys and perils of superstardom.

Miley is one of five children of Billy Ray Cyrus, who became known in the early 1990's for the foot-stomping anthem ''Achy Breaky Heart'' and who, until recently, could be seen in the United States and more than 40 other countries in original episodes of a drama called ''Doc,'' a show about a country physician who relocates to New York City. That series, on PAX, enabled Mr. Cyrus to parlay his ''Achy Breaky'' exposure into an improbable career as an international TV star, in much the way David Hasselhoff used his fame as an American TV star to become a pop singer abroad. (Attentive viewers of the 2001 David Lynch film ''Mulholland Drive'' may have also noticed Mr. Cyrus in the bit part of Gene, the pool man.)

Mr. Cyrus, 44, has a role on ''Hannah,'' too. He plays Miley's father, Robbie, but he was asked to audition only after his daughter landed her part. And when he was offered the role, he says, he wasn't sure whether he should take it.

''I didn't know if I was right for her dad,'' he said, seriously, as he strummed an acoustic guitar in a cavernous dressing room on the show's Hollywood soundstage, where he and Miley occupy adjoining alcoves, separated by a frilly curtain (hers). ''The last thing I would want to do is screw up Miley's show.''

Mindful that Miley is working alongside her father at an age when she might be craving a little less togetherness, Mr. Cyrus said he had been careful to give his daughter lots of space. He has, he said, made a point of biting his tongue hard to avoid giving her any unsolicited acting advice.

''I never say, 'I'd do it like that,' '' he said, before adding that Miley was far more likely to tell him, ''It might be funny if you do it that way.''

Of working so closely with her famous father, Miley said: ''At the beginning it was a little bit weird. We'd get into little arguments.''

''Now,'' she added, ''it's really good.''

To devote themselves full-time to the production of ''Hannah,'' on which Miley, a seventh grader, is tutored on the set, Mr. Cyrus and his wife, Tish, moved her and her four siblings to Los Angeles from Nashville. She reluctantly left behind her family's seven horses, as well as a number of good friends.

Young viewers will be pleased to know that she has helped fill that void by befriending two co-stars -- Emily Osment and Mitchel Musso, both 14 -- who also play her best friends, Lilly and Oliver, on the show. At least early in the series, Lilly and Oliver are the only schoolmates whom the fictional Miley trusts with the secret that she is really Hannah.

In real life, Emily, Mitchel and Miley say they are constantly sending each other text messages offstage and gathering, at least electronically, in the evening for three-way conference calls in which they talk like the teenagers they are.

The message underlying ''Hannah'' -- one meant to strike a chord with parents, as well as with their children -- is that celebrity is not to be confused with real life, and that happiness comes when one stays true to oneself. Thus, the on-screen Miley is constantly faced with the temptation to reveal her alternate, bewigged identity to her schoolmates, who pay her little mind but have Hannah pictures plastered inside their lockers.

The real-life Miley still has to make her bed and clean up her room at home. In her father, Miley says, she has a role model as grounded as a daughter (and teenage star) could have. A thoughtful man who is readily self-deprecating, Mr. Cyrus has, for example, written a tongue-in-cheek song for a forthcoming album that tries to turn jokes about his 1990's hairstyle back on his critics. Its title: ''I Want My Mullet Back.''

On more occasions than she could possibly count, Miley says, she has also watched her father get button-holed for autographs during meals out, and, however much he might have been inconvenienced, watched him sign his name with a smile.

''He'll say: 'These are people supporting you. Be good to them,' '' Miley said.

Which is not to say that the real-life Miley has grown comfortable with the notion of being recognized in malls, among many other places.

''I have always been known as Billy Ray Cyrus's daughter,'' she said. ''Now they say my name. I freak out!'