Miley Cyrus Receives Hollywood Walk of Fame Star, Reflects on Legacy and Reinvention
Miley Cyrus added one of Hollywood’s most visible honors to her résumé on Friday, receiving a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in a ceremony that celebrated not only her decades-long career in entertainment, but also her evolution from child star to one of pop music’s most shape-shifting modern figures.
The ceremony, held in Los Angeles, drew family, collaborators and celebrity supporters as Cyrus accepted the honor with a speech focused less on achievement and more on artistic longevity, legacy and the urgency that continues to drive her work.
Best known for first becoming a household name through Disney Channel’s Hannah Montana before reinventing herself multiple times across pop, rock and experimental music, Cyrus used the moment to reflect on the meaning of permanence in an industry built on reinvention.
Referencing “Walk of Fame,” a song from her 2025 album Something Beautiful, Cyrus spoke about mortality, ambition and what remains after public recognition fades. The track, co-written with Brittany Howard of Alabama Shakes, ends with the lyric “You’ll live forever”, a phrase Cyrus acknowledged directly during her remarks.
“Although I love the lyric, the fact I won’t is what creates the urgency that sets my heart on fire,” she said, using the moment to explain what continues to fuel her artistic decisions. Rather than presenting the honor as validation, she described it as the product of consistency, discipline and repetition.
She also recalled advice from her father about long-term achievement, quoting him as saying that a skyscraper begins with a jackhammer, a metaphor she extended to the construction of a career and, fittingly, the literal installation of a star on Hollywood Boulevard.
Cyrus also made clear that she does not view the recognition as something to be collected or used as proof of arrival. In one of the strongest parts of her speech, she rejected the idea that public honors are the ultimate goal of artistic work.
After emerging as one of Disney’s biggest stars in the late 2000s, Cyrus spent much of the following decade dismantling public expectations around who she was supposed to be, often through abrupt visual and musical reinventions. From country-pop beginnings to the provocative Bangerz era, psychedelic experimentation, rock-infused performances and more recently the polished introspection of Endless Summer Vacation and Something Beautiful, her career has rarely followed a predictable path.
Actress Anya Taylor-Joy delivered one of the event’s tributes, recalling seeing Cyrus as a teenager on the cover of J-14 magazine and immediately recognizing her star potential. “She challenged the rules, rewrote them, and every once in a while, set them on fire in a teddy bear costume,” Taylor-Joy said, referencing one of Cyrus’ most culturally memorable public reinventions.
Fashion designer Donatella Versace, who dressed Cyrus for the event, also paid tribute, praising her resilience, individuality and cultural presence. “A star is what you are,” Versace said before ending with a line tailored to both Cyrus’ image and the occasion: a playful warning that anyone stepping over her new Hollywood star should do so “with attitude” and preferably in high heels.
Family members including Tish and Brandi Cyrus attended the ceremony, along with Cyrus’ fiancé, musician Maxx Morando, whom she referenced in her closing thanks alongside her fans and what she called her “future family.”
Cyrus said she hopes the work she leaves behind continues to resonate with future generations she will never meet, describing the kind of art she wants to create as raw, imperfect, glamorous and alive.
