My life as Hilary Duff. No, not that one
Sharing a name with a celebrity is equal parts comedic, exasperating and revealing
This First Person column is the experience of Hilary Duff, who grew up in northern Ontario. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
Earlier this week I received an email offering a free Brazilian lymphatic drainage massage in Hamilton, Ont. The only issue was the message wasn’t intended for me. It was meant for the other Hilary Duff — to get her relaxed before her sold-out show in Toronto this Saturday.
Wait. What? You’d be forgiven for skipping past the byline on this article. But yes, scroll back up and you’ll see my name. Hilary Duff. They are one and the same.
Which brings me back to the lymphatic massage. In case you’ve not heard, Hilary Duff is on a comeback tour, taking the stage in cities like London, New York, Los Angeles and one show in Canada.
Excitement around the chance to see Duff perform after nearly 18 years has led to a deluge of emails to my inbox. Turns out it’s quite convenient for people to overlook the differences in our physical appearance on my writing and photography websites and click “email” instead.
I am by no means alone in my celebrity name experience. Lots of people are name twins with famous folks. In university, I was friends with an Emily Dickinson. A colleague’s dad was George Harrison. It happens.
While not uncommon, what I’d argue makes my situation unique is the duration and geographic reach of Hilary Duff’s cultural cachet.
I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say that she was one of the defining stars of the millennial generation and a cornerstone for North American teens in an era when none of us had social media or YouTube. We were all watching the same television shows and movies, and everyone knew our name.
It was 1998 in Rouyn-Noranda, Que., when I first saw our name on the big screen (read: my childhood best friend’s basement television). It was a sleepover movie night, and one of Duff’s first films, Casper Meets Wendy, was in the VHS player. I was eight and I still remember my surprise and excitement.
Then came her mainstream success through The Lizzie McGuire Show, which ran for 65 episodes between 2001 and 2004. Next, her music career, then The Lizzie McGuire Movie.
By middle school, my parents were buying me glossy Hilary Duff magazines so I could cut our name out and use it on the collages on my bedroom walls; by high school I dressed up as the “other” Hilary Duff for Halloween, spending my part-time job pay on her Stuff by Hilary Duff clothing line from Zellers (RIP).
When Facebook launched a few months later, I received friend requests and “pokes” from people who wanted to make social media contact with a celebrity. At one point, my account was even suspended until I sent Facebook a copy of my driver’s licence to prove my identity.
Given our minimal age difference — at 35, I’m only three years younger than my celebrity counterpart — the jokes about my name have always been a part of my life. It is a guarantee that, upon learning my full name, people think they are going to land a clever remark I’ve never heard before.
Mostly, I find the coincidence funny and sometimes even beneficial — for whatever reason people never seem to forget my name. But let me come clean: I’d be lying to say it doesn’t get a little old after awhile.
What has been interesting, too, is to observe the emails and Facebook messages I have received over the years. These offer a rare window into the world of celebrity:
● School assignments: “You honestly made my childhood with Lizzy McGuire. Right now for English we are allowed to choose our own topic for our research paper and I want to write about: the ethical dilemma of using childhood actors/influencers and their psychological standing as they grow up.”
● Wedding invitations: “We are your biggest fans! We’re so grateful for all you've unknowingly added to our self-expression, our joy and our love in the past five years of our relationship and feel a bit cheeky but excited to extend an invite to you!”
● Comeback tour-related requests: “I’m just giving this a shot. I was trying to get tickets to your show in Toronto as my fiancé and her best friend have loved you since you were a kid and I was trying to make a Christmas miracle happen. The tickets apparently sold out in minutes.”
I’ve fielded podcast invitations from India, requests for support from asylum seekers in Somalia and offers to try breastfeeding products from American brands after Duff became a mom.
Sometimes, the messages are heartbreaking: a sick kid’s mom trying to get a signed photograph from Hilary Duff. In these moments, I’ve considered printing a photo of my blond counterpart and squiggling our autograph. Though the temptation has been there, I’ve never replied to the emails. This is part me not wanting to engage with the internet creeps (see below) and part not having the time or patience to explain that “yes, this is Hilary Duff. No, not that one.”
And of course, there have been emails of the romance genre, ranging from the benign subject line “Dating and admiration” to the more alarming, often very explicitly forward emails, from fans. These ones get immediately marked as spam. The others get filed in the “Hilary Duff fanmail” folder on my Gmail account.
Our lives once again overlapped when Duff was in a relationship with then NHL hockey player Mike Comrie. This wouldn’t have impacted me much — only in 2009 Comrie happened to play for the Ottawa Senators — the year in which I was a second-year student at Carleton University in Ottawa.
Seeing photos of Hilary Duff cheering on Comrie from the stands of what is now the Canadian Tire Centre, I was equal parts amused and perturbed. “Of course, of ALL the places she could be, she’s in Ottawa,” I thought.
As far as I’m aware, Hilary Duff’s Saturday performance in Toronto is the closest we’ll have been in years. I tried to score tickets for the show, but apparently sharing a name doesn’t get you preferential treatment.
Even if I could have got in, what would I have done? Made a huge poster that announced: “We're name twins!”? I think I just want her to know there’s another one of us out there. To tell her about the friend requests, messages and freebies I’ve been fielding for years, to relinquish myself of the responsibility of ever responding and gain a millennial full-circle moment.
But since that’s not going to happen, her return to music represents the next era in our continued coexistence, one that has been a comedic constant in my life for nearly three decades.
As for the fan mail? I guess it really is anything but so yesterday.
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