Miley Cyrus' Life Since Her Divorce (& What Being A Child Actor Was Really Like)

Miley Cyrus has been famous for well over half of her life, and with her level of talent and charisma, we have a feeling that she is going to remain in the public eye for the long haul. Cyrus skyrocketed to fame when "Hannah Montana" made its television debut in March 2006, after which she became a bona fide teen idol. Over the next handful of years, she put out music both as Hannah and as herself and had a bunch of hits. But for a long time, Cyrus was in Hannah's shadow, and she was correspondingly shackled by the image the world had put upon her.

Once Cyrus began to make music on her own terms, she faced an onslaught of criticism for the way she acted, how she dressed, and even what she sang about. At the same time as she was angering the parents of "Hannah Montana" followers, Cyrus was broadening her adult fanbase thanks to major jams like "Wrecking Ball" and "We Can't Stop," and her quirky, lovable, slightly unpredictable personality. In the years since, she has put out consistently great music that has earned her a whole new level of respect, both within the industry and with the public. And for the most part, people have embraced Cyrus for who she is — public nudity and all. Here is a look at Cyrus' life since her much-publicized divorce in early 2020, and a peek at what being a child star was really like for her.

Since Miley Cyrus started in the entertainment business before she even hit puberty, she had to get used to hearing people's opinions about her when she was still a kid. Earlier in her career, most of the feedback was positive, as she was very much seen as America's sweetheart. "I remember getting my license and it being a big deal that I was driving," Cyrus said in a 2019 Vanity Fair article. "Almost like the milestones in my life were milestones for America. It almost felt like America was a weird godparent, you know?" Still, the love for Cyrus did not stop people from commenting on her appearance and sexuality.

Cyrus did play a role in shaping the lives of a generation of children, which is perhaps why she was scrutinized so harshly when she attempted to break away from her teen idol image. But while she swung all the way to the other end of the spectrum by doing things like singing about drugs and twerking on Robin Thicke, she was a grown adult by then. At the end of the day, Cyrus is not responsible for how "Hannah Montana" fans behave — their parents are. "I was so influential in kids' lives that I was like America's nanny," Cyrus said in the Vanity Fair piece. "Like, 'Just sit your kids in front of me and I'll teach them how to be a good person.' Which maybe backfired on the American godparent."

Though she may have been able to keep her drug use under the radar for most of her "Hannah Montana" run, Miley Cyrus still had parents up in arms on a few occasions. For instance, people had a lot to say when intimate photos of Cyrus were leaked online in 2008, despite there being no nudity involved. The photos are about as racy as what you would find on any teenager's Finsta, but that did not stop the story from making every news site from The Sydney Morning Herald to Wired. An even bigger scandal erupted that same year, when Cyrus posed for a Vanity Fair cover story. Both of these instances are listed on Page Six's guide to Cyrus' biggest controversies of all time.

In the Vanity Fair cover in question, Cyrus (then 15) was photographed in nothing but a white sheet. The picture, taken by famed photographer Annie Leibowitz, shows just a bare back and arm. Cyrus was shamed into apologizing, releasing a statement that downplayed her agency. "I took part in a photo shoot that was supposed to be 'artistic,' and now, seeing the photographs and reading the story, I feel so embarrassed. I never intended for any of this to happen and I apologize to my fans who I care so deeply about," she said, per Teen Vogue. A decade later, Cyrus rescinded her apology on Twitter, posted alongside a New York Post cover with the headline "Miley's Shame."

Some actors run from their past roles, especially when they diverge from their current persona, but Miley Cyrus is not one of these people. Cyrus has on numerous occasions said that she has an immense amount of love for the character that made her famous. Never was this more apparent than when Cyrus posted a two-page, hand-written letter on the 15th anniversary of "Hannah Montana." "It was bittersweet to know I would be leaving, you (a huge piece of me) behind in Stage 9, which is where I say I grew up when asked," Cyrus wrote in the letter, posted to Twitter in 2021. "Hannah, I hope you hear me and believe those words are true. You have all my love and utmost gratitude. Breathing life into you for those six years was an honor."

In the letter, Cyrus also described "Hannah Montana" as "a rocket that flew me to the moon and never brought me back down." This is a similar sentiment that Cyrus has expressed elsewhere, like when she told MTV News, "I am stoked that that was a part of my life." Cyrus opened up even further in a 2020 Rolling Stone profile, where she discussed previously discrediting her work on "Hannah Montana," and how even Lil Nas X told her he was a fan. "When my peers are having these experiences and accepting themselves because of something that I demonstrated while they were a kid, that's when I go, 'Sh**, I f**king am Hannah Montana.'"

Teenage actors who appear on channels like the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon have to be around children all of the time. They act alongside them, they go to events targeted toward them, and are most likely swarmed by them each and every time they go out in public. We could see how this early exposure to kids could make someone love them but, for Miley Cyrus, it had the opposite effect. "I don't love kids," Cyrus confessed in a W Magazine interview in 2014. "I don't love them because, I mean, I think I was around too many kids at one point — because I was around a lot of kids."

Not liking kids is reason enough to not want to be a parent, but Cyrus has suggested other motives for staying childless in subsequent interviews. In 2019, she told Elle that a large part of the reason she did not want children had to do with the current state of the environment and not wanting to bring life into the current world. She also discussed the backlash that she has faced for her choices. "We're expected to keep the planet populated. And when that isn't a part of our plan or our purpose, there is so much judgment and anger that they try to make and change laws to force it upon you," Cyrus said. "If you don't want children, people feel sorry for you, like you're a cold, heartless b***ch who's not capable of love."

We all went a little stir crazy during the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused some people to start baking bread or learn a new language. But a lot of artistic types used the lockdown to get creative — like Miley Cyrus, who focused her efforts on both music (her album, "Plastic Hearts," came out in late 2020) and mental health advocacy. Realizing that people were crumbling, Cyrus designed an Instagram Live show entitled "Bright Minded: Live with Miley." "We didn't have many external experiences going on at that time. So all of us were able to explore ourselves in our different layers and dig deeper into things that we haven't had the time to [go into]," Cyrus told British Vogue.

Cyrus' show — which had the tagline "stay lit in dark times" and is readily available on YouTube — was so well-received that it even won a 2020 Webby Award. Guests included more traditional celebrities like Amy Schumer, Selena Gomez, and Elton John, plus some drag queens, reality stars, a senator, and more. Each episode was set around a theme from a program called BRIGHT MINDS, created by Dr. Daniel Amen, who is Cyrus' therapist. "I know I'm in a unique position, and my experience with this pandemic is not like most everyone else's in my country and around the world," she explained in WSJ Magazine. "So to be able to share his services for free and allow people to get this therapy, I thought was really important."

Miley Cyrus fans are lucky in that they never have to wait too long for new music. Since 2007's "Meet Miley Cyrus," Cyrus has never gone more than three years between albums. Like many musicians, however, a lot of her stuff has ended up on the cutting room floor. Some of this content was shelved because of Cyrus' personal life in recent years. While she released an album shortly after her divorce — 2020's "Plastic Hearts" — Cyrus has said she scrapped a lot of the music she had planned to release around that time.

"So, I ended up really kind of trashing these ... two EPs," she said on "The Howard Stern Show" in 2020. "I released one and trashed the other two because it was no longer relevant. Because I had this huge change in my life and the music just didn't really reflect what I was going through." We are hopeful that one day, Cyrus will release this music from her vault, much like Taylor Swift has done with some of her unreleased tracks. There is a whole wiki detailing dozens of unreleased songs from the singer, organized by each era of her career. In the meantime, however, fans can enjoy Cyrus' latest album, "Endless Summer Vacation," which was released in March 2023, and her relatively large library of hits.

We don't have the space to detail her complicated journey with substances, but Miley Cyrus did get sober after undergoing an intense surgery for Reinke's edema in 2019. "It's been really important for me over the last year living a sober lifestyle, because I really wanted to polish up my craft," she told Variety in January 2020. "At the beginning, it was just about this vocal surgery. ... I did a lot of family history, which has a lot of addiction and mental health challenges."

Cyrus has spoken out about the surgery and its links to her sobriety on numerous other occasions. She told Joe Rogan, on his podcast, that she became sober and even gave up smoking cigarettes after the surgery, after learning more about the effects on her body. "It's not really the drinking, it's staying up all night. You know, once you have your drink, you end up smoking," she explained. In a 2020 Rolling Stone interview, Cyrus said that she has not done drugs in years, and that part of her motivation to get sober at 26 was to avoid joining the "27 club." She also shared that she slipped during the pandemic and drank alcohol. "It was really a struggle. Mental health and anxiety and all that," she said. "I lost myself there, and now I'm back on five weeks."

If you or anyone you know needs help with addiction issues, help is available. Visit the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).

It is extremely hard for former child stars to be taken seriously as adults in the entertainment business, especially those who are so famously linked with a larger-than-life character like a "Hannah Montana." For a long time, Miley Cyrus had to deal with the stigma of her Disney past — and the criticism of the ways in which she chose to present herself after leaving the show. Unsurprisingly, Cyrus felt like she was at times treated badly earlier in her career, despite producing highly successful albums like "Bangerz" and "Younger Now." "I think I've always had a level of respect, but the c-word, 'crazy,' was labeled on me a lot," she told Rolling Stone in 2020. "It was that I was crazy, that I was, even at some points, cold or unable to settle down."

In that same article, Cyrus said that she felt a shift in how people perceived her when after the release of "Midnight Sky," the lead single from the 2020 album "Plastic Hearts." But even back in 2017, Cyrus told Entertainment Tonight that she felt more and more that she was getting her due. "I feel like I have the respect as an artist that I want, so it's less that I have to prove myself, and that gives me a lot of contentment," she said. Cyrus is now regarded as such a strong musician that Rolling Stone published an article on her 50 best songs in March 2023.