Hilary Duff’s Net Worth Reveals the Drama Over Her Pay on ‘Lizzie McGuire’ & What She Might Make on ‘HIMYF’

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With tens of millions of dollars in the bank before she even turned 18 years old, Hilary Duff‘s net worth and what she made for Lizzie McGuire and other projects have been hot topics of discussion for years.

Duff—whose full name is Hilary Erhard Duff—was born on September 28, 1987, in Houston, Texas. She has one older sister, Haylie Duff, who is also a singer and actor. Duff started acting when she was a kid after her parents put her and her sister in acting, singing and ballet classes. The classes led to roles in local theatre productions, including a production of The Nutcracker in San Antonio. In 1993, Duff, her sister and her mother moved from Houston to Los Angeles, where she worked as a child model and in commercials. Duff acted in minor roles in TV shows and movies like True Women, Casper Meets Wendy, The Soul Collector and Daddio before her big break as Lizzie McGuire in Disney Channel’s Lizzie McGuire in 2001. The show—which ran for two seasons and led to a movie—made Duff a household name, with video games, toys, books and dolls based on her character. The series also led to other projects on the Disney Channel like the 2002 movie, Cadet Kelly.

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After the finale of Lizzie McGuire in 2004, Duff went on to release four albums, write four books and star in projects like A Cinderella Story, Younger, How I Met Your Father and Gossip Girl. In 2010, Duff married National Hockey League player Mike Comrie. They welcomed a son, Luca Cruz, in 2012 before their divorce in 2016. Duff went on to marry musician Matthew Koma in 2019. They welcomed their first child together, a daughter named Banks Violet, in 2018. Their second child, a daughter named Mae James, was born in 2021.

In an interview with E! News in 2016, Duff talked about the “struggle” of pursuing both a music and acting career. “Sometimes I feel like it’s still a bit of a struggle to figure out how to do both and how to do both really well,” she said. “I’d love to blend both those worlds. I feel like now if you can do both, you do both. Now it’s really accepted to be multi-faceted where before you really weren’t taken seriously if you do both.” She also opened up about what it’s like to be a parent while working. “I mean I’m always a mom. But just be a mom. Music will always be a part of my life. I have such loyal fans out there,” she said. “I think I just need to wrap my head around the fact that I’m going to make a record and see what sticks…but like going on tour and doing that you know I have a child and I love like doing pick ups and drop offs at school.”

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So what is Hilary Duff‘s net worth and what did she make for Lizzie McGuire, A Cinderella Story and other projects? Read on for what we know about Hilary Duff’s net worth ahead.

What does Hilary Duff make from How I Met Your Father?

Image: Patrick Wymore/Hulu.
Image: Patrick Wymore/Hulu.



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What does Hilary Duff make for How I Met Your Father? How I Met Your Father is a spinoff of How I Met Your Mother, which aired for nine seasons and 208 episodes on CBS from September 2005 to March 2014. The series is told in two timelines: the future, which sees main character Ted Mosby in 2030 recount to his kids, Luke and Penny, about the events that led him to meet their mother; and the present, which sees Ted and his group of friends in New York City—Marshall Eriksen, Robin Scherbatsky, Barney Stinson and Lily Aldrin—experience those events in real time. Like the original series, How I Met Your Father uses the same framing to tell the story of how main character Sophie (Duff) met her children’s father, as Sophie and her friends—Jesse, Valentina, Sid, Charlie and Ellen—live those events in the past.

While what Duff makes on How I Met Your Father isn’t known, it’s estimated that she makes around the same amount as the original cast of How I Met Your Mother. According to Forbes, Neil Patrick Harris, who played Barney, made $400,000 per episode for the last season of How I Met Your Mother, which earned him around $18 million in 2014. The magazine also reported that cast members Cobie Smulders, Josh Radnor, Alyson Hannigan and Jason Segal made $340,000 per episode for season 9, which earned them each a total of $10 million in 2014.

In an interview with Newsweek in 2022, Duff talked about what drew her to How I Met Your Father. “I was nine months pregnant when I got the phone call. And I was like, are you really calling me about a job? Then I heard what the job was and I was like, I can’t do that,.” she said. “No. I’ve been down the reboot alley before. Then they’re like, you should talk with [creators] Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger. I was like, oh, shit. This is major. So talking to Isaac and Elizabeth, who could actually sell me a bag of dirty laundry, I was obsessed. I want to do this. I read the script, and it was so good.”

Duff was also attracted to the show because it was a sequel and not a reboot. “It really has a lot of heart, it’s funny, and it’s a little dirty. There are really special moments,” she said. “The original show had that where you’re tugging at heartstrings, but then we’re all gonna laugh, it’s just a classic sitcom. But they also promised me this is not just your run-of-mill sitcom, it’s going to be a hybrid, we’re going to be filming on the streets of New York, it’s going to be more grounded.”

What did Hilary Duff make from Lizzie McGuire?

Image: Walt Disney / Courtesy Everett Collection.
Image: Walt Disney / Courtesy Everett Collection.

What did Hilary Duff make for Lizzie McGuire? Duff starred on Disney Channel’s Lizzie McGuire for two seasons and 65 episodes from January 2001 to February 2004, and one movie, The Lizzie McGuire Movie, in 2003. The series, which was nominated for two Emmys, starred Duff as Elizabeth McGuire (better known as Lizzie), a 13-year-old girl who experiences the struggles that come with adolescence and junior high school.

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Duff was paid $15,000 per episode on Lizzie McGuire, which made her a total of $975,000 for 65 episodes throoughout the series. Duff was also paid $1 million from The Lizzie McGuire Movie, which made $42.7 million in the United States and Canada and more than $55.5 million worldwide, according to Fortune. The movie grossed $17.3 million in its opening weekend and had the second biggest opening weekend of 2003 after X2: X-Men United. The Lizzie McGuire Movie Soundtrack, which Duff has several songs on, is also certified two times platinum with more than $2 million units sold in the United States. Fortune also reported in 2003 that Lizzie McGuire merchandise—including dolls, pencils, notebooks, sleeping bags and an apparel line at Kohl’s—had made more than $100 million in revenue by the show’s end.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly in 2003, Duff’s mother, Susan Duff, revealed that Disney offered the actress $35,000 for a high school spinoff of Lizzie McGuire on ABC after the original series had ended. She explained that Duff didn’t take the offer, as two other networks had offered her six figures per episode to play a high school student in their own shows. Despite negotiations between Duff and Disney, the network couldn’t reach an agreement in the end and rescinded its offer, ending the Lizzie McGuire franchise. ”Disney thought they’d be”Disney thought they’d be able to bully us into accepting whatever offer they wanted to make, and they couldn’t,” Susan said at the time. ”We walked away from a sequel. They walked away from a franchise.” She continued, ”We weren’t feeling the love. They weren’t giving Hilary the respect she deserved.”

Susan also revealed that a second Lizzie McGuire movie was cancelled after Disney failed to pay Duff a $500,000 bonus (negotiated from $100,000) it promised if the first movie made at least $50 million. The $500,000 was in addition to a $4 million deal Disney offered Duff for the sequel. The deal also would’ve paid Duff 4 percent of the second Lizzie McGuire movie’s total gross, which was estimated to quadruple her salary. According to Susan, however, Disney withdrew the deal when she asked for the first $500,000 bonus to be paid. “Duff’s lawyer played a hand and didn’t expect the deal to go off the table,” a Disney source told Entertainment Weekly at the time. ”He misstepped greatly.” Duff’s lawyer, Michael R. Fuller, however, saw the situation differently. ”They were telling us we’d get an offer and be very happy,” he said. ”We didn’t hear anything for months, and then came this anticlimactic proposal.”

Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group president Nina Jacobson told the Los Angeles Times at the time that Disney considered its offer to Duff as very “generous.” ”We feel we were generous and we reached to make this happen,” she said. ”We’re only sorry the other side didn’t feel the same way.” She also told Entertainment Weekly, ”We tried very hard to close a deal on the ‘Lizzie McGuire’ sequel. We think Hilary is very talented and we very much wanted to stay in business with her.” Columnist Marilyn Beck also quoted sources at the time blaming the fallout on Susan. The sources claimed that Susan was a ”a handful to deal with” and Duff had ”T-R-O-U-B-L-E stamped in front of her name” because of her mother’s behavior.

Susan denied the rumors and speculated that the comments about her behavior were used by Disney to justify the loss of the Lizzie McGuire franchise to its shareholders. ”Disney kept leaking stuff and using undisclosed sources,” she said. ”And because we didn’t say anything, it sounded like it was true. I thought it would run its course, but they kept coming at us. In my wildest dreams, I cannot imagine adults beating up on a 15-year-old kid in the papers like they have.” Duff also responded to the claims at the time in a statement to Entertainment Weekly. ”I am very supportive of my mom and dad’s involvement in my career and appreciate the guidance of my management team,” she said.

In August 2019, Disney announced that a Lizzie McGuire reboot with Duff and original creator Terri Minsky was in the works for Disney Plus. The series was set to follow Lizzie, now 30, in Brooklyn, New York City, as she worked as an apprentice for an interior designer and was engaged to a man who owned a restaurant in SoHo. The series, which planned to include Lizzie’s animated alter ego, would see her leave New York City to return to Los Angeles after she received significant news. Adam Lamberg, who played Lizzie’s best friend David “Gordo” Gordon in the original series, was also set to return. In December 2020, Duff announced that the reboot had been cancelled after creative differences between Disney and Minksy. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the script for the pilot of the reboot included references to sex and had cheating as a central plot point. In an Instagram post in February 2020, Duff hinted that the reboot wasn’t “family friendly” enough for Disney.

What did Hilary Duff make for Cheaper by the Dozen?

Image: 20th Century Fox Film Corp.
Image: 20th Century Fox Film Corp.

What did Hilary Duff make for Cheaper by the Dozen? Duff played Lorraine Baker, one of Tom and Kate Baker’s 12 children, in 2003’s Cheaper by the Dozen and its 2005 sequel, Cheaper by the Dozen 2. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Duff made $1 million for the first Cheaper by the Dozen movie and $2 million for its sequel.

What is Hilary Duff’s net worth?

Image: TV Land / courtesy Everett Collection.
Image: TV Land / courtesy Everett Collection.

What is Hilary Duff’s net worth? Duff is worth $25 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth. Along with the tens of millions of dollars she’s made from How I Met Your Father, Lizzie McGuire and Cheaper by the Dozen, Hilary Duff’s net worth also includes what she was paid for other other films like 2002’s Cadet Kelly, 2003’s Agent Cody Banks and 2004’s A Cinderella Story. According to Celebrity Net Worth, Duff made $2.2 million for A Cinderella Story, a modern, live adaptation of Disney’s Cinderella, and $2 million each for 2004’s Raise Your Voice, 2005’s The Perfect Man and 2006’s Material Girls. She also earned $500,000 for Agent Cody Banks co-starring Frankie Muniz. Per Celebrity Net Worth, Duff also made $18 million in royalties and bonuses between 2003 an 2013.

Hilary Duff’s net worth also includes the money she’s made from shows like TV Land’s Younger, which she starred on for seven seasons from 2015 to 2021, as well as partnerships with brands like Johnson’s Baby, Duracell, Clairitin, Smash + Tess, Glasses USA and Kohl’s. Duff was also the chief brand officer for Naturalena Brands’ Happy Little Camper and Veeda product lines from 2019 to 2021. Hilary Duff’s net worth also includes what she’s made from her three books: The Elixir trilogy (2010’s Elixir, 2011’s Devoted and 2013’s True) and her 2021 children’s book My Little Brave Girl. Duff has also released four albums: 2002’s Santa Clause Lane, 2003’s Metamorphosis, 2004’s Hilary Duff, 2007’s Dignity and 2015’s Breath In. Breath Out, and has gone on four sold-out concert tours: Metamorphosis Tour, Most Wanted Tour, Still Most Wanted Tour and Dignity Tour.

In an interview with People in 2007, Duff revealed that she never predicted the level of success she would have. “I didn’t even know a lifestyle like this existed. It is really exciting and really scary at the same time,” she said. “There’s a lot of pressure to deal with and a lot of stress and I do feel a little bit like a business woman but I have this other job where everyone knows who I am and everyone watches everything I do and it’s kind of scary because I really am just a person at the same time.”

She also talked about the negative side of fame. “I try to stay away from the gossip stuff. I used to be obsessed and I just feel like it’s so negative,” she said. “I don’t like reading stuff about myself on there so I’m trying to stop reading about other people. It does [get easier] when you just stop caring. It just becomes uninteresting. They say the same stuff about all the same girls or all the same people and supposedly everyone has all the same problems – it s pretty amusing now.”

That said, Duff noted that the “biggest perk” of her success was the ability to help others in “positive ways.” “It’s nice to know that you affect people in positive ways,” she said. “And I am really young and I’m able to support myself and help out my family if they need it or help out a friend. And since I do have a life where I can just go wherever I want whenever I want, I get to have everything I want in my house and be private and enjoy it here.”

How I Met Your Father is available to stream on Hulu. Here’s how to watch it for free.



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