Editor’s Note
Miley & Me
Omigod. Omigod. Omigod.
I just found out that Miley Cyrus used to live right around the corner from me. Like. Right. Around. The Corner. Of course, she wasn’t Miley Cyrus then. Well, I mean, she was Miley Cyrus, but only in name. She wasn’t THE Miley Cyrus, 16-year-old international pop sensation and gravy train for umpteen movie, TV and record execs.
I didn’t even know that Miley had lived in Canada before I started my research for our interview. (I’m old.) But it turns out she spent four of her most formative years in Toronto — from eight to 12 — while her dad, Billy Ray Cyrus, was working on a TV show here.
And she lived in The Beach, about a five-minute walk from where I was renting an apartment at the time. We may have passed each other on the boardwalk, or sat across from each other at Lick’s, her favourite burger joint (“I miss it so much”), which was just up the street from her house.
What really strikes me about this image — of me and Miley jostling each other over the Lick’s ketchup dispenser — is how tiny she would have been, and how little she would have looked like THE Miley Cyrus. It was only about four years ago, I haven’t changed much since then. I look pretty much the same, have the same job, many of the same friends, go to the same gym, eat the same brand of lentil soup. But in that short time Miley has been transported through the looking glass.
She’s so pervasive in pop culture that it’s hard to believe we hadn’t even heard of Miley three years ago, when Hannah Montana made its debut. But that’s the way it is with child stars. They change so fast it’s impossible for them to have consistent, leisurely careers — they’re simply not the same person five years on. Look at Dakota Fanning, an adorable little sprite who suddenly looks like a supermodel.
How will Miley transform over the next few years? Read “Country Time” to find out how she’s hoping it all turns out.
Kristen Stewart’s been through the whole child star thing. But she did it in such a different way. Under-the-radar roles in a wide variety of films never hinted at the phenomenal popularity she’d experience as the star of the teen vampire pic Twilight. Now, as she explains in “Hot Property,” Stewart has a lot more control over her destiny. First up? This month’s teen comedy Adventureland.
Admit it. If you’re over 30, the first thing that springs to mind when you see Joshua Jackson is Pacey Witter, Dawson’s Creek’s lovable bad-boy. Oh Pacey, when will you ever learn? This month the Vancouver native returns home for One Week, in which his character rides a motorcycle across Canada. In “Die Another Day,” he tells us why the Prairies were his favourite part of the trip.
For “Monsters’ Night at the Improv,” we talk to Seth Rogen, Will Arnett and co-director Rob Letterman about the challenges of going off-script while making an animated movie.
And we have “Motley Crew,” our interview with the cast and director of Watchmen. That’s the movie that has comic book fans salivating, and the comic book illiterate utterly confused — “Why is Batman teaming up with a bunch of superheroes we’ve never heard of? Wait, that’s not Batman.”
Marni Weisz, editor