Growing up in the spotlight! Dove Cameron has changed a lot since her Disney Channel days. While fans may know the actress for her starring roles in Liv and Maddie and the Descendants franchise, the actress has since started to lean into more adult projects.
“My earliest years in the industry were some of the best years of my life, while also being some of my worst and an unbelievable uphill battle,” Dove told Create & Cultivate in January 2020. “I definitely had a lot of fun, experimenting with who I was, what my abilities were, falling in love for the first time, and navigating this entirely new world that I was now, all of a sudden, involved in.”
While Liv and Maddie wasn’t her first-ever TV role, it was the project that made Dove a star. Playing both title characters allowed the actress to show of her skills, which in turn, won her a Daytime Emmy Award in 2018. Dove recalled being “touched and very shocked” when winning the award.
“I have always loved this industry. I have always loved film, television, music, and musical theater more than anything in the entire world, and so, to be recognized by people that I respect so deeply, to feel like they saw me as ‘one of them’ was a life-changing moment for me. I’ve never really thought about or put too much value on winning awards, so when I did, the surprise was that much sweeter,” she explained to Create & Cultivate. “I think it gave me a permission that I hadn’t given myself to actually pursue this career like I deserved to be here, rather than like I was someone who just wanted to be here but maybe wasn’t quite good enough.”
Aside from her acting roles, the Washington native has started to focus on her music career. In late 2021, the “We Belong” songstress hit the road to perform Liv and Maddieher solo music in front of fans for the first time.
“It’s wild to have a body of work that spans over two years, and then, to just be beginning to perform it now feels sort of surreal,” she told Entertainment Tonight in Ocobter 2021. “It’s exciting to get to sing it with fans who know all the words, the energy every night, and it’s a new experience for me, which at this point in my career, there aren’t that many of those, so it’s been amazing.”
The best is yet to come for Dove as her career continues! Scroll through our gallery to see the Disney Channel alum’s total transformation over the years.
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