Miley Cyrus got emotional as she was honored with a Hollywood Walk of Fame star on Friday.
“To my family, my future family, parents, my mom, my siblings, my friends, my collaborators, thank you for loving and supporting not only the choices that I make, but my fears, and then facing them with me,” Cyrus said as she sounded like she was getting choked up. “Today is something that I’ll never forget and I’m always going to cherish. I love you all so much, thank you.”
Cyrus was joined by mom Tish Cyrus, her sister Brandi Cyrus and fiancé Maxx Morando at the event. Though her fellow musician father Billy Ray Cyrus wasn’t in attendance at the ceremony, following the two having a falling out in recent years, Miley Cyrus gave her dad a sweet shoutout in her speech.
“My dad used to say that a skyscraper starts with a jackhammer — so does a star on the Walk of Fame by the way — and it’s not about the force, but it’s about the repetition,” she said. “What feels so special to me about this star is that it’s an accumulation of devotion.”
She continued, speaking about her legacy, “The star isn’t something that you win like a seasonal game. It’s not something that you can chase or collect. It’s not something you make the next record for, and then tote it around like a trophy. At 1 [p.m.], this moment will be over, and it’ll go back to being a busy street full of unique people and people that are here exploring for the first time, our city that we all share and that we love so much. After today, I commit to continuing the cycle of creation, because that is what I truly live for. My hope is what I leave behind continues to affect the hearts of generations to come, ones that I won’t be here to experience. I hope it awakens something raw and imperfect and sexy and glamorous and joyful in times that need it.”
Miley Cyrus’ Walk of Fame honor comes a little less than a year after she released her latest album Something Beautiful, which includes the song “Walk of Fame.” The visual album also included a “Walk of Fame” video that saw Cyrus rolling around on the star-covered sidewalk.
That song, co-written by Alabama Shakes frontwoman Brittany Howard, who also sings and plays guitar on the track, ends with Howard singing “You’ll live forever.”
“Although I love the lyric, the fact I won’t [live forever] is what creates the urgency that sets my heart on fire, my life and my art, and my desire to break down the walls of any boxes that we’ve been tricked to believe that exist,” she said.
Both Anya Taylor-Joy and Donatella Versace also paid tribute to Miley Cyrus at the Walk of Fame ceremony. Taylor-Joy recalled first seeing Cyrus in J-14 magazine.
“I knew this and her were going to be huge,” Taylor-Joy said. “What I did not know [is that] ‘huge’ would barely begin to cover it.”
She added, “She challenged the rules, rewrote them and every once in a while, set them on fire in a teddy bear costume. Miley darling you have always been and are now quite literally a star.”
Versace added to those who might want to visit Miley Cyrus’ spot on the Walk of Fame, “Just remember, if any of you guys step over Miley’s star, do it with attitude.”
Miley Cyrus and her father, Billy Ray Cyrus, recently had a falling out after Miley’s parents divorced in 2022. While Tish Cyrus married Dominic Purcell in November of that year, Billy Ray Cyrus got engaged to Firerose, an Australian musician 27 years younger than him, with the pair splitting in May of 2024.
The “Achy Breaky Heart” singer is now dating Elizabeth Hurley. Miley and Billy Ray Cyrus unfollowed each other on Instagram and she failed to thank him when she won record of the year at the 2024 Grammys.
Yet, last May it seemed the two had reconciled, with Miley Cyrus joining Billy Ray Cyrus to celebrate her brother Braison Cyrus’ 31st birthday.
She wrote on her Instagram Stories shortly thereafter, “My dad and I have had our challenges over the years. Now, in my thirties, family is my priority above all else. I’m at peace knowing bridges have been built and time has done a lot of healing. Grateful for the good health and love that flows through my family.”
Later that month, she opened up to The New York Times about the falling out with her dad while confirming they were no longer estranged and saying she’s trying to “be more compassionate to [her] parents.”
“I think timing is everything. As I’ve gotten older, I’m respecting my parents as individuals instead of as parents—because my mom’s really loved my dad for her whole life, and I think being married to someone in the music industry and not being a part of it is obviously really hard,” she said.“And so I think I took on some of my mom’s hurt as my own because it hurt her more than it hurt me as an adult, and so I owned a lot of her pain.”
She added, “But now that my mom is so in love with my stepdad, who I completely adore, and now that my dad, I see him finding happiness, too—I can love them both as individuals instead of as a parental pairing.”
Miley Cyrus also referenced her father when she learned last year that she would be receiving a Walk of Fame star.
“When I first came to LA from Nashville as a little girl, my family would stay at a hotel on Hollywood Blvd, and I would go on late night walks with my dad when no one would recognize him,” she wrote on Instagram at the time, alongside a clip of the “Walk of Fame” music video. “We’d have the gift shops to ourselves & buy knock off Oscars and Marilyn Monroe merchandise. To now be cemented on this legendary boulevard, surrounded by the icons who inspired me, feels like a dream. This moment will live forever, thank you to everyone in my life who made it possible. I am grateful to share this star with you.”