Duff: Riding high

Los Angeles, June 19 (Reuters): They are not Tom and Katie or Brad and Angelina, but with their new movie The Perfect Man, teen star Hilary Duff and director Mark Rosman are becoming something like a perfect power couple.

Their respective careers have collided in a sort of perfect storm of rising Hollywood fortunes.

Duff grew up on television screens playing the slightly gawky, always earnest teenager Lizzie McGuire on Disney’s The Lizzie McGuire Show, and Rosman was one of that programme’s directors, guiding Duff’s work since she was 12.

He directed Duff in last year’s modest movie hit A Cinderella Story and again for romantic comedy Perfect Man, which opened in US theatres on Friday.

Duff, who has become a major celebrity, has been the marquee star for young audiences in Rosman’s only two movies since the Lizzie McGuire series and his first two for major Hollywood studios.

Duff likened Rosman to “a favourite uncle” in an email exchange with Reuters.

“We’re able to finish each other’s sentences and read each other’s minds. It makes working on a project so much easier,” she said.

When he hears this, Rosman laughs. “Certainly there’s a rapport there. She knows what to expect from me, and I know what I’m going to get from her,” he said.