Miley Cyrus does more than just twerk and wreck balls, check out 50 interesting facts about the former "Hannah Montana" star.



Miley's real name is Destiny Hope Cyrus.



Her father, country singer Billy Ray, picked the name because he thought it was his daughter's destiny to bring hope to the world. The star legally changed her name in 2008 to Miley, a childhood nickname which was originally “Smiley.”



Cyrus has five siblings from her parents’ marriages, all of whom have been involved in showbiz.



Her favorite song by her dad is "Achy Breaky Heart".



Miley grew up on a ranch in Tennessee and started riding horses at the age of just two.



Her favorite cereal is Lucky Charms.

She briefly lived in Toronto when her father, Billy Ray, was filming the TV series "Doc" in 2001.

She was kicked out of evangelical private school. Opposing reports say it was either because she stole her teacher's motorized scooter or because she told her classmates what French kissing was.

She knew she wanted to become an actress after going to see "Mamma Mia!" at the Royal Alexandra Theatre.

After becoming inspired to act, she took classes at Armstrong Acting Studios in Toronto - a school that Nina Dobrev also attended.



She had a very interesting first job. Her dad would take her on tour with him and pay $10 to pick up the bras and underwear that his fans would throw on stage.



Her godmother is country singer legend Dolly Parton.



Miley was born left-handed, but her father Billy Ray taught her to use her right hand. As a result, she's joked that if people can't read her autographs that she signs with her right hand, they should complain to her father.



Miley made her big screen acting debut when she scored a small role in Tim Burton's film "Big Fish."

Miley suffers from tachycardia, a non-life-threatening heart condition? It causes her resting heart rate to excel more rapidly than normal.



She was not actually supposed to be Hannah Montana - she originally auditioned for the role of Hannah’s best friend Lilly Truscott.

While auditioning for “Hannah Montana”, she was competing with another actress for a role in the Taylor Lautner film "The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D," but ended up doing “Hannah Montana” instead.



Miley's dad didn't want her to audition for Hannah Montana."I think he just didn't want me to feel any kind of rejection," Miley told Rolling Stone. "He didn't want me to be hurt by the industry."

To accommodate filming, Miley and her family relocated to LA in 2005 as Billy Ray Cyrus was also involved in the show and played her fictional dad and manager.

She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for "I Thought I Lost You" in the animated film "Bolt."

She Used to Have a YouTube ShowIn 2008, Miley and her dancer pal Mandy Jiroux started up their own YouTube program. The Miley and Mandy Show featured the girls mostly hanging out in Cyrus' bedroom, goofing around with guitars, silly dance moves, and their computers. They made 30 or so videos before retiring the show.

“Party in the U.S.A.” was originally meant for Jessie J, who wrote the song but didn’t find the track “edgy” enough for her style.



Miley released her autobiography Miles to Go in 2009.

The fourth and final season of Hannah Montana started filming in January 2010.



She released her third studio album Can’t Be Tamed in June 2010.

Her single "Party in the U.S.A." was written to promote her clothing line with Max Azria.



After the Haiti Earthquake Miley contributed to two charity singles, “We Are the World: 25 for Haiti” and “Everybody Hurts”.

She intends to go back to college one day. "I am a firm believer that you can go back at any age you want, because my grandma went back to college at 62 years old,” she said.



Her first boyfriend was model Justin Gaston for nine months, but she told Parade magazine that Liam Hemsworth was her "first serious boyfriend."



She met Liam while filming the romance drama The Last Song in 2009.

Hunger Games actor in June 2012 although the pair have since had an on-off relationship.

Miley announced her engagement to theactor in June 2012 although the pair have since had an on-off relationship.



The last time they were photographed together was on the red carpet together in August when they attended the Paranoia premiere.



Her most recent films made in 2012 were flops. "So Undercover," a film in which she starred opposite Jeremy Piven, went direct-to-video and "LOL," a Demi Moore film, was a limited release.



Her mother likes to embarrass her. "When she's being embarrassing, she'll call me 'sweet girl,'" Miley revealed to Rolling Stone. "When we were getting ready for the VMAs, I was about to put on my teddy-bear costume and she's like, 'Sweet girl, do you need to potty before you put your costume on?' I'm like, 'Mom! Kanye is standing right here!'"

At last count, she has 22 tattoos. Her latest is a portrait of her grandmother on her arm, which was inked by her favourite tattoo artist Kat Von D.



Some of her other tattoos include a peace sign, a heart, a cross, the word "love", the phrase "just breathe", a Leonardo da Vinci sketch, the Roman numerals VIIXCI, for 7/91, the date her parents met and a Teddy Roosevelt quote: "THAT HIS PLACE SHALL NEVER BE WITH THOSE COLD AND TIMID SOULS WHO NEITHER KNOW VICTORY NOR DEFEAT"



She has been causing a lot of controversy lately, but her first major controversy was back in 2008 when Vanity Fair published a photo of her, then only 15 years old, wrapped in a bedsheet.

She was also criticized for pole dancing on an ice cream truck during the 2009 Teen Choice Awards.

In 2010 during her promotion “Can’t Be Tamed,” Miley pretended to kiss a female backup dancer during a performance on Britain’s Got Talent. Cyrus released a statement in which she “promised” that the two did not actually kiss. However, Miley later admitted she did “nothing wrong.”

Miley is afraid of spiders.

Her favorite snacks are cookie dough and cashew nuts.



Miley Cyrus guested on Two and a Half Men twice in 2012 (as a romantic interest for both Ashton Kutcher and the half man) and drove some of its biggest ratings of the season — with 13.6 million total viewers in her first outing.

"We Can’t Stop" was originally intended for Rihanna but she rejected it. Producer Mike Will Made It told MTV News that he didn’t have Miley in mind when he started writing it.



Her music video"Wrecking Ball" holds the Vevo record for the most views in the first 24 hours after its release, and the record for being the fastest clip to reach 100 million views.



Miley is a big supporter of gay rights and in 2011 she got a tattoo of an equals sign on her right ring finger to symbolise her belief in equality for gay people.

Cyrus blames a Tweet she sent in support of gay marriage for loads of subsequent hate mail, an event that caused her to shut down her Twitter account in late 2009 despite her audience of 2 million followers.



Miley and Kanye West are “homies”. Before Miley went onstage at the VMAs, Kanye asked to have a quick chat with her. "He came in and goes, 'There are not a lot of artists I believe in more than you right now,'" she told Rolling Stone. "The whole room went quiet. I was like, 'Yo – can you say that again?!' I just kept repeating that over and over in my mind, and it made me not nervous."



Cyrus’ highly-criticized VMAs performance was the most-tweeted about event in the short history Twitter, beating out Beyonce’s performance at the Super Bowl halftime show. Miley Cyrus generated 360,000 tweets every minute.



She says the person she admires most is her mother, Leticia "Tish" Cyrus.