She recently made headlines when she posed fully nude for Paper Magazine with her pet pig Bubba Sue and revealed her bisexual past.
But before she became the outrageous Miley Cyrus we know today, photographer Rachel Devine remembers her as innocent Destiny Hope Cyrus, or as she more commonly preferred, ‘Smiley Miley’, due to her infectious smile.
In these never-before-seen photos, an 11-year-old Destiny poses with confidence for the camera with an adorable smile and pigtail braids, showing off her girly-girl style for her modeling portfolio in 2004, which was taken in Los Angeles.
Rachel recalled: ‘She was so nice and very smiley, which I remember her saying that she preferred to go by ‘Miley’ and that was how she got her nickname, because she was really smiley.
‘She put ‘Miley’ in quotation marks [on her card] so I’d remember that’s what she wanted to be called.’
The photos date back to the same time she landed her breakthrough performance in the hit Disney channel series, Hannah Montana, as the lead role of Miley Stewart, which aired from 2006-2011.
Before she garnered worldwide attention and shot to super stardom with her highly controversial 2013 MTV VMAs performance, where she stuck out her tongue and made ‘twerking’ a mainstream dance move of the millennium, the Melbourne based photographer recalls the little girl in the pictures.
Rachel, who currently runs a photoblogger site, Sesame Ellis, recalled the former Disney star, who officially changed her name to Miley Ray Cyrus in 2008, talking about her first big role, admitting she was ‘so excited’ about it.
She said: ‘It was at the start of it. I think that she had been filming it for one season, I’m not quite sure. She talked about it during the shoot. It was just starting to film, but it was definitely talked about.
‘She was just excited about the show. There were not big plans discussed at that point. She was just super nice and happy and not shy.’
While Rachel had no idea Miley, now 22, would reach quite the level of fame she has today, she admits she could tell the singer had the right attitude to make it in the industry even from a young age.
She said: ‘She definitely had a good personality for show business, but would I ever expect what she does now? No.