Miley Cyrus Cries As She Accepts Disney Legend Honor: “Still Proud to Have Been Hannah Montana”
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Miley Cyrus hasn’t forgotten her roots.
On Sunday, Cyrus became the youngest-ever recipient of a Disney Legend, a Hall of Fame award bestowed by the Walt Disney Company. Past Disney Legends include Christina Aguilera, Betty White, and Oprah Winfrey.
At the D23 event in Anaheim, California, on Sunday, the Grammy winner got emotional as she took to the stage and paid homage to her Disney roots, having started her career at 13 years old as the star of Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana.
“I’m gonna let everybody get on a little Disney Legend secret. I’m the one that tells you what you’re not supposed to know,” she told the crowd as she wiped away tears, per Variety. “And what I want to say, is that legends get scared, too. I’m scared right now, but the difference is we do it anyway, and all of you can do that every single day. It’s legendary to be afraid and do it anyway. There is no such thing as failure when you try.”
She continued to reference the hit Disney Channel show, which ran for four seasons from 2006 to 2011 and eventually spawned a spin-off movie.
“I stand here still proud to have been ‘Hannah Montana,’” she said. “This award is dedicated to Hannah and all of her amazing, loyal fans, and to everyone who has made my dream a reality To quote the legend herself, ‘This is the life.’”
Miley Cyrus wipes away tears during her Disney Legends acceptance speech at #D23. pic.twitter.com/iMU2UCcsgu
— Variety (@Variety) August 12, 2024
In the years since her Disney days, Cyrus has been fairly open about how the experience has shaped her career to date.
“It was a great, safe experience overall,” she recently told W. “People have 50- or 60-year-long careers, but mine has been close to 20 years, and I’m 31. I have been in the public for more of my life than I haven’t. They say that the creative adult is the child who survived. I worked really hard as a child. I didn’t go to prom. I didn’t go to dances. I didn’t have so much of that social experience or time for friends. Disney, they were doing very well off of the amount of work that I was putting in as a child. I don’t have any bad feelings about that. It’s just the truth.”
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