the disney teen queen miley cyrus has reinvented herself as a

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the disney teen queen miley cyrus has reinvented
h e r s e l f a s a tat to o e d, w e e d - s m o k i n g w i l d c h i l d . i s s h e
g r o w i n g u p o r g o i n g c r a z y ? R u b y w a rr i n g t o n f i n d s o u t
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ou’d never guess that Miley Cyrus isn’t a morning person.
It’s 7.30am — and a Monday, no less — on the set of Good
Morning America, and you could power a small village in
Africa with the energy she’s giving off. An overnight flight (by
private jet) from LA to New York means she hasn’t even slept,
but still she is brighter than a barrel of buttons, signing
autographs for the ever-attendant masses, smiling the megawatt
smile that earned her her name. (Christened Destiny Hope, she was
nicknamed Smiley as a baby for her sunny disposition.) But then
she’s used to being the star of the show.
We meet again the following day in an icily air-conditioned suite at
the Peninsula Hotel. Cyrus is dressed in Versace stripper shoes, a
vintage Moschino micromini and a leather bra top. “I’m freezing,”
she shivers. She exudes the same megawatt energy I witnessed on
set yesterday, despite a full-on day of photoshoots and a meeting
with Anna Wintour. And it’s fitting that “Miley Cyrus” has become
hip-hop slang for cocaine (the “white girl” drug) — she talks a mile a
minute. “Good Morning America is always weird for me,” she says,
her voice surprisingly deep and husky. “I’m not that person, I’m not
good at sitting there being like, ‘I’m on a morning show!’ I’m more of
a late-night-talk-show guest. Jimmy Kimmel loves me. Letterman
loves me. Late night you can just be yourself.”
And herein lies the overarching theme behind the emancipation of
Cyrus, now 20, who in a few awkward steps has gone from America’s
sweetheart, the ultimate Disney teen queen, to twerking, bong-toting,
tattooed terror. As the self-assured, opinionated young woman
sitting in front of me will have it, she has found herself in the process.
It all began when a YouTube clip of Cyrus taking a hit from a bong
(albeit of a legal high called Salvia) surfaced at the end of 2010.
Back then, she was still best known for her leading role in the
Jacket by
Theyskens’
T h e o r y. J e a n s
by Just Cavalli.
Glove by
Patricia Field.
Ring by Trash
a n d Va u d e v i l l e .
Body chain by
Lorraine
Schwartz.
All other items,
photographs: Mario Testino
22
Cyr us’s own
Apart from one or two female friends (Kelly Osbourne is “the best one
to have on your side”), Cyrus mainly hangs around with guys. “Girls are
so catty,” she says. “I’m not good at being fake, and girls are so good at
acting, especially girls in LA, because they are actresses.” She also worries
about people’s motives for wanting to hang out with her. “I’m like, why are
you grabbing my arm now there’s all these paparazzi around?”
Her family — which sounds as close-knit as it is sprawling, with all sorts
of siblings from previous relationships, and none other than Dolly Parton
thrown into the mix as godmother — is where she gets her real strength.
Her younger sister, Noah, and brother, Braison, a model, live with her in
LA. “But my mom is numero uno,” she says. “We fight, but I have to have
her with me. In fact, when I go to London tomorrow, it will be one of my
first trips without her. I was kind of getting anxious. I might not even go
out while I’m there.”
And suddenly you remember how young 20 is — even though Cyrus
insists that the tut-tutting about her sexy new image is ridiculous. “People
forget what growing up is,” she says. “When you’re 20, you do some crazy
shit, because you’re trying to figure out who you are.
“Besides, kids know everything under the sun. If they have an iPhone,
they’re watching porn. Watching me grinding a little in some white
leggings in the video for We Can’t Stop [the teaser
single for her new album has racked up 80m
YouTube views] is nothing compared to what your
12-year-old son is watching under the sheets.”
She doesn’t understand why the internet isn’t
censored. “Everything else is, but you can google
how to commit suicide, and Siri will even tell you
how to dispose of a dead body.”
Pharrell Williams produced much of the new
album. Cyrus describes him as like an older
brother: “We fight till we’re black and blue, but
we’re always honest with each other.” He has said
he thinks the young singer, who has become a sort of protégée, is “an old
soul”. It was he who encouraged her to cut her hair. “ ‘Free yourself,’ I kept
saying to her. ‘Your view of yourself, your view of the world, is so accurate.
Start to embrace it now.’ ”
It’s rare to meet someone so young who appears so confidently herself,
but there is still a constant need for attention (the endless selfies, the
Twitter “call outs” to the haters) that suggests an underlying insecurity,
which, if ignored, could implode one day. Cyrus was annoyed with her
father when, in an interview with GQ magazine in 2011, he said he was
“scared for her”, and that he wished he could “get her sheltered from the
storm. Stop the insanity just for a minute.”
Watching her dance around the set of GMA, mouthing the words to
Icona Pop’s I Love It, the song’s lyrics seem to sum up how she feels about
her crazy life. But what happens when it all stops? Of course, she’s also
got an answer for that. “Remember when Madonna did the Super Bowl,
and she’d reinvented herself again? And people could not believe she was
older and looking so hot. I hope I’m that kind of person, where I just
continue to be reinvented, doing what I do.”
And even though, as she says, “I have lived so much already”, you know
Miley 2.0 is only the beginning. v
Disney franchise Hannah Montana — cue mass hysteria that here was
another Britney in the making.
Then, in August last year, Cyrus shaved her head — and got it right. Oh,
so right. “Never felt more me in my whole life,” she tweeted, along with
the picture she used to reveal the new hairdo to the world. Of course, it
helped that the peroxide blonde crop showed us her face in a whole new
light. What were formerly the pretty features of a living, breathing Bratz
doll were revealed as arrestingly beautiful. You can bet that meeting with
Wintour was to discuss an upcoming Vogue cover. And as she says: “It
caused so much drama. My hair has got me called every name in the
book.” Such as? She rolls her china-blue eyes. “Well, obviously I’m a
lesbian now I have short hair. Not that I’m offended by being called a
lesbian — that’s one of the better things you could call me.”
She obviously feels some vindication in having scooped the top spot
in Maxim magazine’s Hot 100 poll this year. “To be on the cover and not
be the typical Brazilian bikini babe, with hair down to your waist
and fake boobies — you know, to have a real girl as number one — I think
that was important.”
As Cyrus loves to tell you, she has strong views on pretty much
everything (“My grandad was a Democratic legislator, so I have that
in my blood”), and having been allowed to
grow up, it feels right, and healthier, that she’s
being allowed to express them. For example,
no anxious publicist feels the need to jump in
and stop her when she tells me she prefers
smoking weed to drinking: “When I smoke,
I don’t get the sick feeling I get when I drink,
or that anger rising up. There’s a reason
Bob Marley was like some kind of musical
Rasta Mother Teresa!”
Cyrus’s “on-off” (as the tabloids would have
it) fiancé is the Hunger Games actor Liam
Hemsworth, whom she met when filming The Last Song, and who
proposed in May last year with a 3.5-carat-diamond art-deco bauble. The
cause of the break-up speculation is the fact that the couple spend so
much time apart — and today their relationship is off subject. “I used to
be open about it, but people abused that, and now I’ve taken it back,
people misinterpret it to mean something is wrong.” For the record, she is
very much wearing the ring, flanked by two fat bands of diamonds.
And yes, she does want children, just not too young. “I love being
young and living my life,” she says. “I want time to get mentally really
strong. I love my partner, but at the end of the day, if it ends up just me,
I want to know who I am, so I can be a good parent on my own.”
This could be a veiled reference to her parents’ break-up. After 19 years
of marriage, her mother, Tish, filed for divorce from the country singer
Billy Ray Cyrus earlier this year. (This is the only other subject she won’t
touch today.) But it could also be a lesson she learnt from her good friend
Britney Spears, whom Cyrus somewhat worryingly describes as “an idol
and like a mentor”.
Was Spears’s public meltdown a lesson on the flip side of fame? “I
think it’s different for everyone. I’ve always been outgoing, and Britney
is a much quieter person. Plus, my dad has been sober for 20 years
now, and he has taught me. It’s not like I don’t have fun and mess up,
but it’s controlled.”
When I smoke
w e e d, I d o n ’ t g e t
the sick feeling I
get when I drink,
o r t h at a n g e r
rising up
Miley Cyrus’s single We Can’t Stop is out on August 4
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Bikini by Chanel. Top (in
hands) by Calvin Klein. Body
chain by Lorraine Schwartz.
All other items, Cyr us’s own