When A Cinderella Story hit theaters on July 16, 2004, the movie became an immediate classic. With its iconic lines and star-studded cast, it’s no surprise fans were obsessed after just the first watch!
Starring Hilary Duff, Chad Michael Murray, Regina King, Dan Byrd and Jennifer Coolidge, among others, the flick was a reimagining of the classic Cinderella story. It was about a girl named Sam (played by Hilary) who was forced to work as a janitor and dishwasher in her late father’s diner after her evil stepmother took it over. But when a cell phone mix-up started an anonymous text messaging and e-mail relationship with the most popular boy in school, Austin (played by Chad), she tried to make herself seem cooler. After a secret meeting at their school’s Halloween dance, Austin attempted to find out Sam’s identity. When it was eventually revealed, the two fell in love.
“I definitely had a crush on him,” Hilary told Cosmopolitan in 2016 about working with Chad. “We had a few kissing scenes in the movie and I remember feeling pretty nervous about that, but then we became friends and I wasn’t so nervous anymore.”
When the movie came out the former Disney Channel starlet also gushed over kissing the One Tree Hill star, telling People that it was “much better than my real first kiss.”
“But like, probably way more awkward because there were 270 people watching, crew and stuff like that, and we also shot it on the third day of filming. Out of those three days, I’d only worked with Chad one day. … and we actually practiced a little bit,” Hilary recalled in 2004. “Like, there was just so many people there, and [we] were just like, ‘You know what? We have to forget about everyone staring at us and go for it and not even think about it.'”
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