Why You Don't See Miley Cyrus In Movies Anymore

In hindsight, it's incredible how prophetic the show "Hannah Montana" really was. Not only did playing the role of Miley Stewart, a teenager who lives a double life as the titular blonde-haired pop star, launch Miley Cyrus' career as an actor, but it ended up being a springboard for Cyrus to start her own successful career as a pop singer. In the years since, Miley has had countless hit singles like "Wrecking Ball" and "Flowers," with numerous awards and accolades making her one of the biggest musical acts in modern history. 

However, one can't help but imagine a timeline in which Cyrus had remained an actor first and foremost, before her early dreams of movie stardom were cast away in favor for Billboard chart-topping. Even her debut as a first-time host of "Saturday Night Live" seemed promising for the superstar's post-Disney career in movies and TV. Alas, over the past few years, Miley's theatrical appearances have been few and far between — including a seven-year hiatus between her last two film roles, both of which were blink-and-you'll-miss-it cameos.

Let's take a look at the history of Miley Cyrus' relationship to acting, including how it conflicted with her burgeoning music career, why it was placed on pause, and where she sees it going in the near future. 

Although it was through singing that Miley Cyrus transcended Disney Channel fame, being a pop star wasn't on her radar. She grew up surrounded by country music: Her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, released his Billboard hit "Achy Breaky Heart" the same year she was born, while the iconic Dolly Parton was her godmother. Even Miley's birth name, Destiny, was given by her parents in the hopes it would foreshadow her rise to stardom. 

Despite all this, Miley found a different path for herself at a young age, after accompanying her father to a 2001 production of "Mamma Mia!" in Toronto. A wide-eyed Miley quickly realized she had found her calling, telling her dad partway through the first act (via The Star), "This is what I want to do, daddy ... I want to be an actress." Still, it'd be several years before Miley landed the role that made her into a household name.

During her time living in Toronto while Billy Ray starred in the TV series "Doc," Miley pursued theater and acting classes. Eventually, with the help of a talent agent, she scored an audition for a new Disney Channel series, "Hannah Montana." While she initially didn't get the part, the producers eventually saw something special in her and cast her in the now-iconic lead role. 

It wasn't long before it seemed like everybody on the planet knew who Miley Cyrus was, thanks to "Hannah Montana." The show was a ratings hit for the Disney Channel, prompting Cyrus to hit the road on tour as the character, with the first season's soundtrack even charting on the Billboard 200. If it seems like everything was overwhelming for Cyrus at this time, that's probably because it was, as she would later reveal.

In a 2017 interview with Harper's Bazaar, Cyrus reflected on this breakthrough moment. While it would be years before she would regret taking the role, she never really processed any of the chaos at the time, saying, "There's so much I don't remember about being a child entertainer because it was so much to keep in my brain ... I didn't realize how much pressure I was under and how that shaped me until, like, this year." This pressure was compounded at the time by loads of media scrutiny over things like her image and off-camera behavior. 

As tends to happen with all good things, the rollercoaster wouldn't last forever. If Cyrus hadn't been feeling the pressure of fame while she was starring in "Hannah Montana," the years immediately afterward were about to offer some drastic whiplash. 

Miley Cyrus always had her eye on what her career post-"Hannah Montana" would look like. In an interview with Cineplex in 2009, she expressed an interest in expanding her acting abilities, saying, "I would love to do an indie film, something a little bit darker ... Maybe an action movie. That's not really my thing, I don't even watch action movies, but I'd like to do it because it seems like a challenge." She cited "Garden State" as an example of the kind of film she wanted to make.

The opportunity finally came for Cyrus in the form of "The Last Song," a 2010 drama based on a Nicholas Sparks novel. Although the role was written with Cyrus in mind, Sparks had reservations about the actress' ability to play a troubled girl reconnecting with her father and experiencing her first brush with love, but was quickly corrected after seeing Cyrus perform on set. 

Although "The Last Song" was Cyrus' first serious role, she had plans to do more, despite working at the time on her third album, "Can't Be Tamed." She particularly became disillusioned with the many changes happening in the music industry compared to what she had grown up around in Nashville, and wanted to focus on building a career as an actor. 

Miley Cyrus had learned well from her Disney Channel character that it can be tricky to live between two worlds. The ending of "Hannah Montana" left her with two different career paths to go down: one as a successful pop star, and the other as a serious actor. Doing "The Last Song" even seemed impossible for Cyrus, having to film it while simultaneously on tour as Hannah Montana and filming the Disney Channel series. 

Despite having dreams of being an actor, Cyrus wasn't exactly sure where she would fit in the entertainment industry, telling The Telegraph, "I'm kind of bipolar in my acting choices because I just want to do a little bit of everything." One thing she did make a firm decision on as a teenager was her decision to not attend college, feeling that she was under no pressure to finish her education while she was young and citing her grandmother as an example of someone who went back to university in her 60s. 

Even her entry in Time's 2008 list of the world's 100 most influential people, written by Donny Osmond, trod the line between admiration for the young star and fear about what her future looked like, pointing out that eventually the child icon was going to grow up whether her fans liked it or not. 

The early 2010s saw a lot of controversy surround Miley Cyrus. While her risque photoshoot for Vanity Fair caused an uproar among her fans' parents, Cyrus scoffed at accusations of growing up too quickly. However, the scandalous behavior caught up to Cyrus, culminating in an explosion of media outrage after she was caught on tape smoking a bong. 

Cyrus expressed remorse for this betrayal of her public image, telling Marie Claire that despite drug use being typical for teens, "They're not role models. So for me it was a bad decision, because of my fans and because of what I stand for." Cyrus still had a sense of humor about her own controversies, which extended to her first "Saturday Night Live" monologue, where she fake-apologized for her public transgressions. 

Not everyone in the entertainment industry was accepting of Cyrus' adult behavior. The actor was slated to have a voice role in "Hotel Translyvania" before she was fired for posing with an obscene birthday cake, and was replaced by fellow Disney star Selena Gomez. Fortunately, she wouldn't have to worry for too long about maintaining a good relationship with Hollywood, given how her music career was about to reach new heights. 

2013 was a massive year for Miley Cyrus, when her music career went from purely successful to completely inescapable. The release of "We Can't Stop" tied "Party in the U.S.A." as her highest-charting single at the time, which was quickly smashed when she released the No. 1 hit "Wrecking Ball." The accompanying album, "Bangerz," also went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200, and Cyrus was named Artist of the Year by MTV.

Still, controversy continued to follow Cyrus. Her infamous performance with Robin Thicke at the 2013 MTV VMAs came as a shock to many former fans of the Disney Channel star, which led to criticism, outrage, and for some, admiration. While music legends like Dolly Parton supported Cyrus, others, like Sinead O'Connor, were outspoken about their disappointment in her objectification. 

Ultimately, the biggest difference between this Miley and her "Hannah Montana" counterpart was maturity. Alongside the public scandals came Cyrus speaking out about political issues like LGBTQ+ rights and racial discrimination. Sadly, acting was put on the back burner, with Cyrus telling Vogue Germany (via Metro), "I'm just not passionate about acting, because I don't like to pretend to be somebody I'm actually not ... I prefer to show my true colors as the real Miley Cyrus."

While Miley Cyrus was becoming synonymous with public controversy, not everybody in Hollywood would turn their backs on her. She still made rare cameos in both film and TV, including "The Night Before" and "Two and a Half Men," but hadn't taken on a major film role since 2012, when she starred in the rom-com "LOL" and the crime comedy "So Undercover." 

James Gunn was one of the few who sought Cyrus for a cameo following those few testy years, with the pop star making an uncredited cameo in a post-credits scene for "Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2." Fans of the film wouldn't be blamed for missing the cameo, as you would never notice the MCU character that Cyrus played, a disembodied robotic head called Mainframe. 

Gunn told Buzzfeed News he was interested in casting Cyrus after seeing her as a guest judge on "The Voice," saying, "I find her funny and likable and sweet ... So we contacted her, and she said yes. She came in and recorded, and she was a delight to work with." In addition to hosting "Saturday Night Live" two more times in 2013 and 2015, Cyrus also returned to TV with "Crisis in Six Scenes," an Amazon Prime miniseries written and directed by Woody Allen, co-starring Elaine May and Rachel Brosnahan.

Miley Cyrus' music career waned in the years after "Bangerz," with albums like "Miley Cyrus and Her Dead Petz" and "Younger Now" receiving less critical acclaim, or even attention, despite continued commercial success. In 2019, Cyrus returned to her roots in television for her first leading role in years, though the story was a lot closer to Cyrus's tragic true-life story than even "Hannah Montana" was.

As part of the fifth season of Netflix's anthology series "Black Mirror," Cyrus starred in "Rachel, Jack, and Ashley Too," playing Ashley O, a pop singer struggling with the direction of her career as her image is recreated in the form of an A.I. doll that contains a copy of Ashley's consciousness. The producers of "Black Mirror" had no expectation that Cyrus would take the role, but not only did she agree, she was highly influential in shaping the look of Ashley O, and even co-wrote the character's song, "On a Roll." 

Especially given the recent discourse on artificial intelligence and artists rights in entertainment, Cyrus's portrayal five years ago is all the more relevant now. She told The Guardian about the role, "I think it's an important story that needs to be told, such a realistic take on what it's like working in the music industry. It really portrays the overt exploitation of artists and that numbers usually eclipse the creative most of the time." Funnily enough, Cyrus's passion about the episode reveals that her outlook hadn't changed much from when she initially prioritized her acting career, out of disillusionment with the industry's capitalistic tendencies. 

"Black Mirror" seemed to promise that there was more acting in the near future for Miley Cyrus, but the opposite turned out to be true. Her 2020 album "Plastic Hearts" was seen as a career comeback, as her style evolved with '80s-tinged rock and New Wave sounds. Cyrus took this new music on the road as the pandemic restrictions eased up, appearing at festivals like Lollapalooza, and even hosted a New Year's Eve celebration on NBC called "Miley's New Year's Eve Party," which aired in 2021 and 2022. 

The best was still yet to come. In 2023, Cyrus released her single "Flowers," which not only debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, but stayed there for a total of eight weeks. The corresponding album, "Endless Summer Vacation," was met with the most acclaim of Cyrus's career, with Variety calling it "a fairly unpretentious pop record that has some stylistic micro-shifts that don't announce themselves too proudly or loudly."

With her most successful album yet, and even after giving up touring for this record, Cyrus opened 2024 by winning two Grammy Awards for "Flowers," for best pop solo performance and the coveted record of the year. As a testament to Miley's newfound confidence as a performer, her rendition of "Flowers" at the ceremony was equal parts celebration and showstopper. 

As if the past year couldn't get any more huge for Miley Cyrus, it also featured the pop star's first on-screen theatrical appearance since "The Night Before" in 2015. Unfortunately, it was yet another cameo, but it was in one of the best comedy movies of 2024. The film, "Drive-Away Dolls," directed by Ethan Coen and co-written with his wife Tricia Cooke, stars Margaret Qualley and Geraldine Viswanathan as two lesbian best friends on a road trip that gets derailed by a major political conspiracy involving customized sex toys.

Cyrus cameos in several interstitial sequences as the mysterious hippie Tiffany Plastercaster, based on the real-life figure of Cynthia Plaster Caster, who like Cyrus's character, notably made plaster casts of celebrity genitalia. In the film, she's the creator of a highly sought-after plaster cast of the junk of a respected U.S. senator, played by Matt Damon. 

According to Coen, Cyrus was already familiar with the history behind her character prior to signing up for the movie, telling The Wrap, "She's into that, both the retro hippie thing and the whole phallus molding thing." Cooke added, "She's also just game for anything, whatever you ask her to do. We wanted to do this low shot that was kind of pushing into her and we're like, 'Do you mind if we go down here?' She's like, 'I've done much worse.'"

The past few years have been rife with rumors about whether or not Miley Cyrus will return to acting, especially after achieving some of the biggest accomplishments a musician can achieve. She's won Grammys, she's had a record-breaking Billboard hit, and this past year she even sang a duet with Beyonce for her album "Cowboy Carter." The time may be close, though Cyrus has expressed the one reservation she has about stepping back into a role at this point in her career.

In an interview with W magazine, Cyrus admitted it'd be hard to return to acting given how larger than life her celebrity persona has become, saying, "I would like to act again. But the role would really need to be right, since it's kind of hard for people to see past me and buy into a character. The character would either need to be an extension of myself, or someone—or something—with a personality that can conquer my own."

Nevertheless, Cyrus' trepidations about acting again haven't stopped the rumor mill from a-flowing. Fans have clamored for a "Hannah Montana" reboot ever since the door closed on the character in 2011, and Cyrus herself has also supported the idea. Only time will tell if Cyrus will get to don the blonde wig once again. 

We don't know if there's a future for Miley Cyrus as an actor, but she has very little to prove at this stage of her career. That was evident this year when Cyrus was named a Disney Legend at D23, the company's biennial expo. The honor is meant to induct important figures in Disney's history and legacy into a Hall of Fame, with fellow recipients in 2024 including Harrison Ford, John Williams, and Angela Bassett.

Although Cyrus has in the past revealed that starring in "Hannah Montana" gave her an identity crisis, she has also been more forgiving of her past in recent years, telling Rolling Stone, "I discredited myself for what I had been almost every step of the way. During 'Dead Petz,' discrediting 'Bangerz.' During 'Bangerz,' discrediting 'Hannah Montana' ... 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 okay with who you've been before."

Cyrus's Disney Legends speech was, similarly, an appreciation for where she's been rather than a condemnation in light of where she's going. "Because 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 her," she said, fighting back tears. "I stand here still proud to have been Hannah Montana. Because she made Miley in so many ways."