Hilary Duff has bared her soul about her checkered relationship with her father after taking brutal swipes at him and her sister Haylie on her new album.
Her parents Robert and Susan Duff divorced in 2008, 20 years after they exchanged vows and four years after the end of Hilary's star-making show Lizzie McGuire.
Robert spent 10 days in a Texas jail for contempt after a judge found that he had sold family assets without court approval, thus violating an injunction.
He later confessed: 'I was unfaithful to our marriage. I feel very badly about that and the effect it had on the girls,' while appearing on Inside Edition.
This Friday Hilary, 38, released her latest album called Luck... or Something, with a song called The Optimist that contains the bristling lyric: 'I wish I could sleep on planes and that my father would really love me.'
She has now explained the nature of her relationship with Robert, saying: 'There's times where I talk to my dad and times where I don't talk to my dad. I do have a pretty sunny disposition, but a lot of s* has gone down, and that's life,' via Rolling Stone.
Hilary Duff has bared her soul about her checkered relationship with her father; she is pictured with her parents Robert and Susan Duff in 2003, five years before their messy divorce.
She recently wrote a song about her estrangement from her sister Haylie, which she discussed in an emotional interview promoting her new album on CBS Mornings.
Hilary produced her latest album alongside her musician husband Matthew Koma, with whom she shares her daughters Banks, seven, Mae, four, and Townes, one.
The erstwhile Disney Channel child star also co-parents a 13-year-old son called Luca with her first husband, retired ice hockey player Mike Comrie.
Luck... or Something also contains a scathing song called We Don't Talk that Hilary has confirmed to be about her estrangement from Haylie.
Although they were once close and worked together on showbiz projects like the 2006 movie Material Girls - a teen comedy inspired by Sense and Sensibility - the two sisters have not been glimpsed together in public since 2019.
Fueling rumors of a breakdown in their relationship, Haylie, 41, recently posted to social media sharing the viral article Ashley Tisdale wrote about her departure from a 'toxic mom group' that reputedly includes Hilary, Mandy Moore and Meghan Trainor.
Now Hilary has shared her emotional reaction to her falling-out with her sister on We Don't Talk, in which she claims to not 'know when it happened' and to be 'not even sure what it was about' while lamenting the loss of their bond.
'People ask me how you're doing. I wanna say amazing, but the truth is that I don't know. What I always end up saying is how we don't talk. We don't talk about it. We don't talk about anything anymore,' she continues.
'If it's 'cause you're jealous, God knows I would sell it all, then break you off the bigger half,' sings Hilary, who has always been the significantly more famous sister.
Although they were once close, the two sisters have not been glimpsed together in public since 2019.
Hilary has now shared: 'There's times where I talk to my dad and times where I don't talk to my dad.'
'Let's have it out. I'll hear you out, you'll hear me out on the couch, get back to how we were as kids,' the A Cinderella Story star went on. 'Let's break it down. So sick of being so sad about how we don't talk and you won't talk about it.'
When We Don't Talk was released, conjecture exploded that the target was Haylie, and Hilary has since confirmed: 'It's definitely about my sister,' on CBS Mornings.
'And just absolutely the most lonely part of my existence is not having my sister in my life at the moment,' she said, explaining that she 'struggled with thinking about including that on the record' before deciding to do so 'because it's my reality.'
Hilary observed that 'it's funny as a person that exists in the world without my other half, so many people are having that experience.'
She confessed she was 'not sure' that the song would 'help' repair her relationship with Haylie and that 'I don't know if she'll hear it. I don't know how she'll react to it. But it is a really personal part of my life that doesn't get to stay personal.'
The How I Met Your Father actress added that she was 'not trying to say something bad; it's literally just my experience. That's really all I feel like sharing.'