Hilary Duff Photo Gallery, News, Interviews, Biography

By Vincent J. Schodolski
Tribune national correspondent

LOS ANGELES --
Part of what attracted actress Hilary Duff to the role of Holly in the recently released film "The Perfect Man" was the fact that she was nothing like the woman she plays.

"I think that when I read the script what I liked the most about it is that I don't relate to her at all," Duff said sitting on a sofa, legs and sandaled feet tucked under her. "The only thing I had in common with Holly is that we both liked eyeliner, a lot of it."

The film also stars Heather Locklear as Duff's mother Jean and Chris Noth, Carrie Bradshaw's "Big" from multiple seasons of "Sex and the City," as the model perfect man.

Prone to picking losers in her quest for love, Jean packs up and moves to a new place every time a romance goes south, which is what takes place in the opening scene of the film. She

packs up Holly and her 6-year-old sister Zoe, played by Aria Wallace. Off they go with a U-Haul trailer behind the tattered old family station wagon and relocate from Wichita to Brooklyn.

"My family is nothing like hers. I didn't grow up at all like how she does, not really getting close to anyone because you never know when you are going to get yanked away," Duff said. "It was really fun to get to kind of imagine and it was hard to imagine what it must be like to have to live like that and deal with those kind of problems."

Duff said that her family was very close-knit. "I grew up in Texas so very normal and Texan and like strong roots and just normal, you know."

She adds: "I have a really cool mom, like really strong and smart, and Holly's mom is like the complete opposite. She's insecure, she obviously had kids at a very young age. She doesn't really respect herself, she's desperate, she's lonely, she doesn't have that great judgment."

Duff said that her onscreen mom did not understand the good things about herself.

"On the outside looking in Holly gets to see that [good] . . . and it just drives her crazy and it really hurts her because the mom gets her heart broken and when she has a problem she packs up and runs. So the kids don't belong anywhere and don't have those roots and relationships to build that you do when you're growing up."

But Holly's well-laid plans--including flowers, love letters and online instant messages--go awry when her mom falls head over heals for the "perfect" man who does not exist.

"I think her intentions were good, but also kind of selfish because she wants to stay in one place and be normal like all the other kids that she's come across her whole life."

Along the way Holly falls for an earnest classmate named Adam (Ben Feldman) and panics as she grows close to a boy for the first time. Mimicking mom, Holly decides the family has to move again, this time for her sake.

"When something happens that kind of hurts her feelings, or that scares her, or that makes her think that maybe they are getting a little too close and she doesn't want to get hurt, she runs away and she doesn't notice it at first but that's the trait of her mother.

"The love story is between the mother and the daughter and how they help each other and kind of get through that tough age and you know the situations that they're dealt with."

Duff, who has released CDs of her music--sung in some cases with her sister Haylie Duff--said she was torn between acting and singing

"I couldn't believe the response of people," she said of a recent tour. "We would play 10,000- to 15,000-seat venues and sometimes we would stay an extra day and sell out the next night. It was just like, oh my gosh, you can't imagine the feeling, you know, it's just instant gratification."

Duff, who is about to start work on "Cheaper By the Dozen 2" with Steve Martin, has just completed another film.

"I just wrapped a movie called `Material Girls' with my sister. It's about two girls that are all like party girls and just have no values and they're not smart and they have a ton of money and this whole family goes down. They lose everything they have. It's really funny.

"Funny things happen to them. They're like dumb girls and there's lots of fun fashion in it [and] silly things that happen.

"They get their company back by getting smart. They kind of do it themselves for once."

She said she planned to remake the Madonna hit "Material Girl" with her sister to coincide with the film's release.