Rise to Fame
Getting fired at 11 from a prior TV role (replaced by twins for child labor law reasons) could've ended her career before it started. She landed Lizzie McGuire in 2001 instead, a show that pulled 2.3 million viewers per episode. Disney reportedly cleared $100 million in merchandise from it alone, which tells you how thoroughly she'd become a franchise. Metamorphosis came in 2003, and her Disney-to-pop blueprint is the actual template Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez both followed.
In the Spotlight
Hulu canceled How I Met Your Father after two seasons in September 2023 despite decent ratings and four Creative Arts Emmy wins. She'd spent six years on Younger before that, which tells you something about her read on where TV was going. Now she's signed to Atlantic Records, working on her first album in a decade, and has a new Hulu series, Pretty Ugly, in production. The career arc is less comeback story than relentless forward motion.
Side Notes
Her father stayed in Houston running his convenience store chain while her mother moved the family to California in 1993 so the sisters could act. She was home-schooled from age 8, which meant no normal childhood but a very efficient one. She co-wrote a New York Times bestselling YA novel, Elixir, in 2010, and launched a clothing line at 16 that reportedly cleared $5 million in its first year. None of it looks accidental in retrospect.