Miley Cyrus' Life Since Her Divorce (& What Being A Child Actor Was Really Like)

Miley Cyrus has been famous for well over half of her life, and with her level of talent and charisma, we have a feeling that she is going to remain in the public eye for the long haul. Cyrus skyrocketed to fame when "Hannah Montana" made its television debut in March 2006, after which she became a bona fide teen idol. Over the next handful of years, she put out music both as Hannah and as herself and had a bunch of hits. But for a long time, Cyrus was in Hannah's shadow, and she was correspondingly shackled by the image the world had put upon her.

Once Cyrus began to make music on her own terms, she faced an onslaught of criticism for the way she acted, how she dressed, and even what she sang about. At the same time as she was angering the parents of "Hannah Montana" followers, Cyrus was broadening her adult fanbase thanks to major jams like "Wrecking Ball" and "We Can't Stop," and her quirky, lovable, slightly unpredictable personality. In the years since, she has put out consistently great music that has earned her a whole new level of respect, both within the industry and with the public. And for the most part, people have embraced Cyrus for who she is — public nudity and all. Here is a look at Cyrus' life since her much-publicized divorce in early 2020, and a peek at what being a child star was really like for her.

Miley Cyrus has been living a somewhat public life since she was born, thanks to her famous dad and his famous friends — like her godmother Dolly Parton — but before her own fame, Miley was by no means a household name. Even after appearing in her father Billy Ray Cyrus' television show, "Doc," Miley remained relatively unknown on her own merits. Then, at age 12, she landed the lead role in "Hannah Montana," a Disney show about a teenager (named Miley Stewart) living a double life as a pop star (named Hannah Montana, of course), which catapulted Miley to superstardom.

Miley became a mega-celebrity when "Hannah Montana" began to air and, since she was only 13, we have no doubt that was overwhelming for the star. Also overwhelming is the amount of money that the "Hannah Montana" franchise brought in, not just for Disney but also for Miley herself. According to Forbes, the "Hannah Montana" brand — which included the television show but also films, soundtracks, tours, books, video games, and a whole lot of merch — helped Miley earn a whopping $134 million by the time she became a legal adult at 18. And while that may seem like a lot, as a major cash cow for the company, Miley earned every dollar and then some. Consider this: Between 2006 and 2011, Disney earned a billion dollars from the franchise. And "Hannah Montana" was just the start of Miley's career, not the peak.

Since Miley Cyrus started in the entertainment business before she even hit puberty, she had to get used to hearing people's opinions about her when she was still a kid. Earlier in her career, most of the feedback was positive, as she was very much seen as America's sweetheart. "I remember getting my license and it being a big deal that I was driving," Cyrus said in a 2019 Vanity Fair article. "Almost like the milestones in my life were milestones for America. It almost felt like America was a weird godparent, you know?" Still, the love for Cyrus did not stop people from commenting on her appearance and sexuality.

Cyrus did play a role in shaping the lives of a generation of children, which is perhaps why she was scrutinized so harshly when she attempted to break away from her teen idol image. But while she swung all the way to the other end of the spectrum by doing things like singing about drugs and twerking on Robin Thicke, she was a grown adult by then. At the end of the day, Cyrus is not responsible for how "Hannah Montana" fans behave — their parents are. "I was so influential in kids' lives that I was like America's nanny," Cyrus said in the Vanity Fair piece. "Like, 'Just sit your kids in front of me and I'll teach them how to be a good person.' Which maybe backfired on the American godparent."

As role models to millions of children, there is a lot of pressure put actors who appear on the Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, PBS Kids, or any other youth-focused channel. Disney Channel stars, in particular, are expected to uphold the values of the company, particularly those stars who are underage. Miley Cyrus did her job to convince America that she was as puritan as the rest of the lot, but she always had a certain edge that made her stand out from the likes of her peers. Cyrus never came off as innocent as a Hilary Duff or Selena Gomez, and for good reason — behind the scenes, Cyrus was not exactly trying to be squeaky clean.

Cyrus made the news when she was caught smoking cigarettes just after the end of "Hannah Montana." Her smoking led to unfair headlines like Fox News' "Miley Cyrus Caught Smoking Cigarettes: Who's the Worst Celebrity Role Model?," published when Cyrus was only 18. She also got into hot water for posting a video of herself using a bong for her 18th birthday — though she had been doing drugs for a while. "I was smoking a lot of weed. I was taking a lot of shrooms," she told Joe Rogan on "The Joe Rogan Experience" in 2020. "I was 17. ... I started getting a little cray-cray." Though we are sure she still parties and is a good time, Cyrus no longer does drugs.

Though she may have been able to keep her drug use under the radar for most of her "Hannah Montana" run, Miley Cyrus still had parents up in arms on a few occasions. For instance, people had a lot to say when intimate photos of Cyrus were leaked online in 2008, despite there being no nudity involved. The photos are about as racy as what you would find on any teenager's Finsta, but that did not stop the story from making every news site from The Sydney Morning Herald to Wired. An even bigger scandal erupted that same year, when Cyrus posed for a Vanity Fair cover story. Both of these instances are listed on Page Six's guide to Cyrus' biggest controversies of all time.

In the Vanity Fair cover in question, Cyrus (then 15) was photographed in nothing but a white sheet. The picture, taken by famed photographer Annie Leibowitz, shows just a bare back and arm. Cyrus was shamed into apologizing, releasing a statement that downplayed her agency. "I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be 'artistic,' and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about," she said, per Teen Vogue. A decade later, Cyrus rescinded her apology on Twitter, posted alongside a New York Post cover with the headline "Miley's Shame."

We have to give credit to any child star who enters adulthood with their head on even semi-straight. Not only do young actors face the same general issues as most adult ones — public and private scrutiny, near-constant rejection, an unbelievable focus on image, and so on — but they are often damaged by the reality of growing up famous in a world that idolizes celebrities. Miley Cyrus has had her share of struggles in life, but she has always remained relatively self-aware and likable. For the last decade, she has also been very consistently telling us who she is — a free-spirited straight shooter with a bleeding heart, who loves experimentation and is committed to sex-positivity, social justice, self-growth, and authenticity.

While Cyrus appears to know herself extremely well nowadays, that was not always the case. She has spoken about how she struggled to find an identity when she was younger, at least in part because she had to figure out who she was outside of "Hannah Montana." "A hard thing I had with it was some of my audience was so attached to a character which wasn't me, so then that does a lot of psychological stuff, where it's like, 'am I valuable as myself?'" she explained on "The Howard Stern Show" in 2020. "The whole show's premise was that when I had my normal hair and looked like myself, no one gave a s**t about me." Cyrus has most certainly found her lane, and we love her for it.

Some actors run from their past roles, especially when they diverge from their current persona, but Miley Cyrus is not one of these people. Cyrus has on numerous occasions said that she has an immense amount of love for the character that made her famous. Never was this more apparent than when Cyrus posted a two-page, hand-written letter on the 15th anniversary of "Hannah Montana." "It was bittersweet to know I would be leaving, you (a huge piece of me) behind in Stage 9, which is where I say I grew up when asked," Cyrus wrote in the letter, posted to Twitter in 2021. "Hannah, I hope you hear me and believe those words are true. You have all my love and utmost gratitude. Breathing life into you for those six years was an honor."

In the letter, Cyrus also described "Hannah Montana" as "a rocket that flew me to the moon and never brought me back down." This is a similar sentiment that Cyrus has expressed elsewhere, like when she told MTV News, "I am stoked that that was a part of my life." Cyrus opened up even further in a 2020 Rolling Stone profile, where she discussed previously discrediting her work on "Hannah Montana," and how even Lil Nas X told her he was a fan. "When my peers are having these experiences and accepting themselves because of something that I demonstrated while they were a kid, that's when I go, 'Sh**, I f**king am Hannah Montana.'"

Miley Cyrus has done a lot of work on herself, and much of that has had to do with embracing all of the different versions of who she has been. Her fame journey started with "Hannah Montana," which used to cause Cyrus shame when she was first trying to become a "serious" musician and created a pattern of Cyrus demeaning or rejecting her previous projects. "During 'Dead Petz,' discrediting 'Bangerz.' During 'Bangerz,' discrediting 'Hannah Montana.' During 'Malibu,' discrediting 'Bangerz,'" she admitted to Rolling Stone. "It's almost like when I have evolved, I've then become shameful of who I was before. What makes you an adult, I think, is being OK with who you've been before."

Even though she has grown and shifted, Cyrus now sees all of her creative stages as valuable. "Everyone that I've been — whether you are thinking about Hannah Montana or the music I made in the past — all of it has always been the truth," she told NPR in 2017. "So I think people are saying 'the new Miley' or 'the more honest Miley' — I've always been that. But I've been honest for who that person was then." Cyrus also said in Vanity Fair that she does not believe in regrets and puts an extreme value on authenticity, telling Harper's Bazaar Arabia that her strategy is just "doing, saying, wearing, creating whatever I'm feeling in that moment."

Teenage actors who appear on channels like the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon have to be around children all of the time. They act alongside them, they go to events targeted toward them, and are most likely swarmed by them each and every time they go out in public. We could see how this early exposure to kids could make someone love them but, for Miley Cyrus, it had the opposite effect. "I don't love kids," Cyrus confessed in a W Magazine interview in 2014. "I don't love them because, I mean, I think I was around too many kids at one point — because I was around a lot of kids."

Not liking kids is reason enough to not want to be a parent, but Cyrus has suggested other motives for staying childless in subsequent interviews. In 2019, she told Elle that a large part of the reason she did not want children had to do with the current state of the environment and not wanting to bring life into the current world. She also discussed the backlash that she has faced for her choices. "We're expected to keep the planet populated. And when that isn't a part of our plan or our purpose, there is so much judgment and anger that they try to make and change laws to force it upon you," Cyrus said. "If you don't want children, people feel sorry for you, like you're a cold, heartless b***ch who's not capable of love."

Miley Cyrus married Liam Hemsworth in December 2018, after eight years of an on-off (but mostly on) relationship. So, we can't help fans for having an intense investment in Liley — which is their couple name — and for being devastated when the couple divorced. Despite being together for years, Cyrus and Hemsworth separated not even a year after their wedding, in August 2019. They were officially divorced by February of the next year. The aftermath of the marriage's end was anything but pretty, not because of Hemsworth or even Cyrus, but mostly because of the media's obsession with tracking their every move.

Cyrus got much of the blame for the divorce, at least in part because she quickly started dating Brody Jenner's ex-wife Kaitlynn Carter. Per Entertainment Tonight, Cyrus and Carter were photographed kissing and canoodling — and the pictures were published hours before the Liley divorce announcement. People reported that Hemsworth was moody and partied too much, but misogyny and biphobia led to Cyrus' vilification. "I just went through a very public divorce that f**king sucked. What really sucked about it wasn't the fact that me and someone I loved realized we don't love each other the way that we used to anymore. That's okay," Cyrus said on "The Joe Rogan Experience." "I can't accept the villainizing and ... it's just amazing to me that the public kind of thinks that there's no gap of time they didn't see that could possibly be what led to this."

We all went a little stir crazy during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused some people to start baking bread or learn a new language. But a lot of artistic types used the lockdown to get creative — like Miley Cyrus, who focused her efforts on both music (her album, "Plastic Hearts," came out in late 2020) and mental health advocacy. Realizing that people were crumbling, Cyrus designed an Instagram Live show entitled "Bright Minded: Live with Miley." "We didn't have many external experiences going on at that time. So all of us were able to explore ourselves in our different layers and dig deeper into things that we haven't had the time to [go into]," Cyrus told British Vogue.

Cyrus' show — which had the tagline "stay lit in dark times" and is readily available on YouTube — was so well-received that it even won a 2020 Webby Award. Guests included more traditional celebrities like Amy Schumer, Selena Gomez, and Elton John, plus some drag queens, reality stars, a senator, and more. Each episode was set around a theme from a program called BRIGHT MINDS, created by Dr. Daniel Amen, who is Cyrus' therapist. "I know I'm in a unique position, and my experience with this pandemic is not like most everyone else's in my country and around the world," she explained in WSJ Magazine. "So to be able to share his services for free and allow people to get this therapy, I thought was really important."

Developing her own Instagram Live show was just one way that Miley Cyrus expressed herself within the last few years. Take, for example, her New Year's Eve specials, entitled "Miley's New Year's Eve Party," which she hosted on NBC in 2021 and 2022, drawing in musical guests like Brandi Carlisle and Saweetie. She also had big name co-hosts — Pete Davidson the first year and Dolly Parton the next — and TV legend Lorne Michaels behind the scenes. Still, it was an odd choice for the popstar. "I thought that [the combination of music and comedy] hasn't really happened on a New Year's show, [and we merged] into this variety show element where you're able to talk about the year and the year to come, in a way, with a lightheartedness," Cyrus told The Hollywood Reporter after the first year's special.

Cyrus also took a left and stepped back into the acting world, in a role on "Black Mirror" that in many ways was perfect for her. "They gave me the script and were like, 'Let us know if you're interested.' And I read it and was like, 'It's not even if I'm interested or not. It's just that no one else can play this because this is my life. Like, you just took my life,'" she said in an interview with Elle. Cyrus played Ashley O., a pop star trying to break free from the shackles of her manager/aunt (who drugs her) and who has an AI doll that is a clone of her consciousness.

Miley Cyrus fans are lucky in that they never have to wait too long for new music. Since 2007's "Meet Miley Cyrus," Cyrus has never gone more than three years between albums. Like many musicians, however, a lot of her stuff has ended up on the cutting room floor. Some of this content was shelved because of Cyrus' personal life in recent years. While she released an album shortly after her divorce — 2020's "Plastic Hearts" — Cyrus has said she scrapped a lot of the music she had planned to release around that time.

"So, I ended up really kind of trashing these ... two EPs," she said on "The Howard Stern Show" in 2020. "I released one and trashed the other two because it was no longer relevant. Because I had this huge change in my life and the music just didn't really reflect what I was going through." We are hopeful that one day, Cyrus will release this music from her vault, much like Taylor Swift has done with some of her unreleased tracks. There is a whole wiki detailing dozens of unreleased songs from the singer, organized by each era of her career. In the meantime, however, fans can enjoy Cyrus' latest album, "Endless Summer Vacation," which was released in March 2023, and her relatively large library of hits.

Speaking of "Endless Summer Vacation," we have to give Miley Cyrus props on her newest endeavor for a couple of reasons. Firstly, the album itself has been getting strong reviews from music critics. Pitchfork's negative review aside, most critics have praised Cyrus' eighth studio album. NME gave it four stars and called it "remarkably intriguing," while Vulture had an equally complimentary review praising Cyrus' "californication." Then there is Rolling Stone, whose reviewer said "The singer breezes through genres with the ease of a well-seasoned tourist," and "Miley Cyrus Sums Up Everything She's Great At On 'Endless Summer Vacation'."

The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200, but the lead single "Flowers" deserves major kudos. The song — which is about Cyrus' divorce — was released in January 2023 and quickly became the most streamed song on Spotify in one week (like, ever). Per the Guinness Book of World Records, the song was streamed over 96 million times during the week ending January 19 — and that is just on Spotify. Then, the following week, Cyrus broke her own record, while also seeing a huge boost to previous hits like "Wrecking Ball." "Flowers" not only topped the Billboard 100, but also the Billboard Global 200, setting records there too. The song takes three of the five top spots for biggest streaming songs in a single week in the history of that particular chart. She also released the song on ex-hubby Liam Hemsworth's birthday, which is brutal but also worth a slow clap.

We don't have the space to detail her complicated journey with substances, but Miley Cyrus did get sober after undergoing an intense surgery for Reinke's edema in 2019. "It's been really important for me over the last year living a sober lifestyle, because I really wanted to polish up my craft," she told Variety in January 2020. "At the beginning, it was just about this vocal surgery. ... I did a lot of family history, which has a lot of addiction and mental health challenges."

Cyrus has spoken out about the surgery and its links to her sobriety on numerous other occasions. She told Joe Rogan, on his podcast, that she became sober and even gave up smoking cigarettes after the surgery, after learning more about the effects on her body. "It's not really the drinking, it's staying up all night. You know, once you have your drink, you end up smoking," she explained. In a 2020 Rolling Stone interview, Cyrus said that she has not done drugs in years, and that part of her motivation to get sober at 26 was to avoid joining the "27 club." She also shared that she slipped during the pandemic and drank alcohol. "It was really a struggle. Mental health and anxiety and all that," she said. "I lost myself there, and now I'm back on five weeks."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

Love her or loathe her, you have to respect what Miley Cyrus has done with her celebrity when it comes to creating change in the world. For example, right at the start of the pandemic, she partnered with the company LOLA and non-profit organization isupportthegirls to donate 100,000 period products to women in emergency shelters across Los Angeles. The tampon donation is just one example of Cyrus fighting for social justice, as she has a long history of standing up for the LGBTQ community, the unhoused, and others who are disenfranchised. Per Foundation Guide, which tracks philanthropic foundations' efforts, Cyrus has donated money to everyone from The Foundation for AIDS Research (amFAR) to the father of a sick child she met when volunteering with the Make-A-Wish Foundation.

Cyrus' biggest endeavors have been done through her own organization, The Happy Hippie Foundation, which focuses on helping homeless and queer youth and uses 100% of the money they receive to help these vulnerable folks. "My parents always instilled in me the importance of treating everyone with great respect, to care about your community and to give back – and I truly believe that a more free, just and equal world really is possible," Cyrus once told Harper's Bazaar Arabia when discussing the organization. Back when she was a teen, Cyrus also volunteered with the Starkey Hearing Foundation to bring hearing aids to Haitians, and donated a portion of ticket sales from a tour to the City of Hope Foundation for cancer research.

It is extremely hard for former child stars to be taken seriously as adults in the entertainment business, especially those who are so famously linked with a larger-than-life character like a "Hannah Montana." For a long time, Miley Cyrus had to deal with the stigma of her Disney past — and the criticism of the ways in which she chose to present herself after leaving the show. Unsurprisingly, Cyrus felt like she was at times treated badly earlier in her career, despite producing highly successful albums like "Bangerz" and "Younger Now." "I think I've always had a level of respect, but the c-word, 'crazy,' was labeled on me a lot," she told Rolling Stone in 2020. "It was that I was crazy, that I was, even at some points, cold or unable to settle down."

In that same article, Cyrus said that she felt a shift in how people perceived her when after the release of "Midnight Sky," the lead single from the 2020 album "Plastic Hearts." But even back in 2017, Cyrus told Entertainment Tonight that she felt more and more that she was getting her due. "I feel like I have the respect as an artist that I want, so it's less that I have to prove myself, and that gives me a lot of contentment," she said. Cyrus is now regarded as such a strong musician that Rolling Stone published an article on her 50 best songs in March 2023.