  | Houston-born Hilary Duff already had accrued some TV and film credits, and starred in a popular Disney Channel series, before her first studio album, Metamorphosis, went triple-platinum in 2003. But while her pop-artistry elevated her profile, her movie career remained stuck in neutral.
As she traipsed through such featherweight fare as A Cinderella Story (2004) and The Perfect Man (2005), the former Lizzie McGuire star appeared incapable of offering audiences anything other than variations of her squeaky-clean sitcom persona.
But War, Inc., which opens in Houston today, should dispel that impression. While the wildly uneven political satire has been drawing mostly mixed reviews, Duff’s risky and frisky performance as a foul-mouthed Central Asian pop tart has many observers singing her praises. Indeed, some have gone so far as to suggest that the 20-year-old Duff upstages many of her more experienced and accomplished co-stars.
“At first,” says Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday, “I wasn’t even sure it was her. Maybe it was the crazy hair, or the wild makeup. But she completely inhabited that character. And I think it gave her an opportunity to show what she’s really capable of, by giving her a chance to play off against her image.”
Film critic and historian Leonard Maltin admits he “didn’t care for War, Inc.
“But I must say I was surprised — and mildly impressed — to see Hilary Duff trying something so different.”
“I thought she acquitted herself extremely well in War, Inc.,” says David Poland, editor of the popular Movie City News Web site. “More so than anyone else in the cast, except for Joan Cusack.”
Duff had to travel all the way to Bulgaria for the on-location filming of War, Inc., a seriocomic scenario set in an imaginary Middle Eastern locale. But as she noted in a post-production interview last year, she didn’t mind adding the mileage to her frequent-flyer account.
For openers, she was eager to accept the challenge of radically against-type casting: She plays Yonica Babyyeah, an uninhibited and thickly accented pop diva who sprinkles her songs with single entendres, and is engaged to a luminary in the Iraq-like realm of Turaqistan.
Better still, there was the additional enticement of getting to act opposite such notables as John Cusack, Ben Kingsley, Marisa Tomei and, of course, the aforementioned Joan Cusack.
“But I have to admit,” Duff said, “I was a little nervous. Because Yonica really isn’t like how I am in real life. It’s a real stretch, totally different from anything that anyone’s ever seen me do before. In fact, she’s kind of everything that I stand against. Which was really fun to get to play. But it also gets to prove a point, to show how she represents this sort of over-sexed, overdone image that’s sold to young people — to young girls — and makes them think, ‘Oh, that’s how I should be.’ ”
Just how over-sexed and overdone? Consider: At one point, Yonica matter-of-factly picks up a scorpion and drops it down her pants, just to teasingly flaunt her what-the-hell wild-childishness. (Duff, a real trouper, used a real scorpion while shooting the scene.)
At another point, Yonica shimmies, shakes and undulates while punctuating her suggestive song lyrics — “I want to blow you up!” — with pauses in all the right places. Then she increases the naughtiness quotient by doing rude things with a gas nozzle.
“I’m really not shy at all,” Duff said. No kidding.
To master the character’s tricky accent, Hilary sought pre-production coaching from Robert Easton, legendary accent coach to the stars. But once the cameras started rolling, it was John Cusack — cast as an acerbic assassin much like the hit man he played in Grosse Pointe Blank — who provided pointers and inspiration.
“We’d finish a scene or something,” Duff said, “and he’d tell me something like, ‘Wow! I’m so lucky to get to be working with you. Because I can see that you’re going to be around for such a long time!’ And I would say, ‘John! Shut up! Are you kidding me? Like, don’t say that to me. I’m the one who’s lucky to be here.’
“Really, he is such a great guy. And he helped me so much every step of the way while I was there. He’s like a total nurturer.”
After completing War, Inc., Duff recorded a vocal characterization for Foodfight! — an animated feature with a not-yet-determined release date — and returned to the pop charts with Dignity, a well-received album that went gold in August 2007.
More recently, she completed roles in two forthcoming independent features: Greta, a drama about a star-crossed romance co-starring Evan Ross (son of Diana Ross) and Oscar winner Ellen Burstyn; and Safety Glass, a dramedy dealing with high school students and their response to the 1986 Challenger space shuttle disaster.
Duff also has been cast alongside Wynona Ryder, Sean Astin, Jon Cryer and Chevy Chase in Stay Cool, an indie comedy by the Polish Brothers (The Astronaut Farmer, Twin Falls Idaho).
Maltin wholeheartedly approves of these career choices: “If Hilary Duff continues appearing in challenging and offbeat indie movies, she can only do herself good. This is a great way of accumulating credibility with critics as well as audiences.”
And it probably won’t hurt her CD sales at all.
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