Miley Cyrus biography

Name at birth: Destiny Hope Cyrus
Born: 23 November 1992
Birthplace: Franklin, Tennessee
Best Known As: Star of the Disney Channel show Hannah Montana

Miley Cyrus became a TV star at the age of 13 as the title character in the Disney Channel series Hannah Montana. Cyrus is the oldest daughter of country music star Billy Ray Cyrus, who topped the charts in 1992 with "Achy Breaky Heart." Miley began performing at an early age, and by the age of 9 was embarking on a professional career. Prior to Hannah Montana, she had a mere handful of jobs, most notably a small part in Tim Burton's Big Fish (2003, starring Ewan McGregor). After a series of auditions that began when she was 11, Cyrus landed the lead role of Hannah Montana, a teen pop star who leads a double life as an average schoolgirl. Her dad, Billy Ray, was then chosen to play her widowed father in the TV series, and the entire Cyrus family moved from Nashville, Tennessee to southern California to encourage Miley's career. The instant success of her television series led to a record deal for Cyrus, whose husky singing voice is often featured in the show. In October of 2006 the soundtrack to Hannah Montana, featuring eight songs by Miley and a duet with her father, debuted at number one on Billboard's Top 200 chart. The album Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus was released in 2007, and Cyrus toured the country in a successful Hannah Montana concert series.

Her nickname "Miley" is a shortened form of her other nickname, "Smiley Miley"... In January of 2008 she announced she had officially changed her name to Miley Ray Cyrus.

Young Miley Cyrus became an overnight sensation in 2006 as the star of the Disney Channel television series Hannah Montana, but fortunately her family has had some experience with that sort of thing -- her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, went from obscurity to stardom in a few short months when the song "Achy Breaky Heart" hit the charts in 1992. The success of "Achy Breaky Heart" was hardly the only memorable event for Billy Ray that year -- on November 23, 1992, he and his wife welcomed their daughter Destiny Hope Cyrus into the world. Destiny's cheerful disposition as a child earned her the nickname Smiley, which stuck when it was shortened to Miley. Miley's career as a professional actress began in 2003, when she appeared in an episode of the television series Doc, which starred her father; the same year, she landed a small role in the Tim Burton film Big Fish. Miley developed an interest in music early on, writing songs and learning to sing while still a preteen, and in 2005 she landed a role that allowed her to put her skills in acting and music to work. Miley was cast in the title role of Hannah Montana, in which she played a teenage girl leading a double life -- by day, she's Miley Stewart, an ordinary kid dealing with school, her friends, her siblings, and all the other foibles of life for a 14-year-old, while a night she dons a wig and becomes Hannah Montana, a multi-platinum pop star whose career is guided by her dad Robby Stewart, a successful songwriter. However, Miley's friends don't know she's also Hannah, and keeping this a secret is no simple matter.

Debuting in March 2006, Hannah Montana became an immediate success with young viewers, and in October, a soundtrack CD was released, featuring Miley singing eight songs from the show along with five related tracks, including a duet between Miley and her father Billy Ray on "I Learned from You." That fall, Miley hit the road, wowing audiences as the opening act for another Disney-spawned pop act, the Cheetah Girls, and in March 2007, the Hannah Montana album was reissued in a special edition featuring a bonus DVD, not long after the show's theme song, "The Best of Both Worlds," was released as a single. A second Hannah Montana album, Hannah Montana, Vol. 2: Meet Miley Cyrus, is scheduled for release on June 26, 2007.