Miley Cyrus used to struggle to "connect with people" because of her fame.
The 31-year-old singer became known around the world when she took on the title role in the Disney Channel sitcom 'Hannah Montana' as a teenager and went on to become one of the world's biggest pop stars in the process but noted that having that kind of notoriety "got in the way" of her social relationships.
She told Harper's Bazaar: "Obviously, [being a child star] shaped me into a very different adult than some of my peers or my friends. It is just a really different childhood to have. For a while, I thought it got in the way of me connecting with people."
Just before the new interview, the 'Flowers' hitmaker had done a Chinese medicine quiz, and one of the questions was about whether she felt she could easily form relationships with others.
Miley wasn't exactly sure how to answer that but did recall that while she can "drop" her celebrity persona whenever she chooses, it can be difficult for others to perceive her as an ordinary person.
She said: "I don’t even know how to really answer that because for who I am as a person, yes, I feel like I can connect to people and I feel like I’m a friend to all. But because of how I’ve grown up, sometimes people make it harder. I can drop my persona really easily, but it’s hard for other people to erase that part of you."
The Grammy Award-winning star appeared on the hit Disney Channel series alongside her father Billy Ray Cyrus and the success of the sitcom made her a multimillionaire by her mid-teens, but she recalled that it was her mother Tish Cyrus who would often step in to discipline her.
She said: "My mom said that I had to get a Nissan or Toyota just like my other siblings. She was never afraid to take my cell phone away. Even when I paid my own cell phone bill! I would always go, like, Mom, that’s for kids that don’t pay their own cell-phone bill.
"And she’s like, 'I don’t care. You’re not getting your phone.'"
