Despite the fact that her big-screen debut was in a supporting role, Hilary proved herself to be a major star in the making in this Frankie Muniz spy adventure. In this film, Hilary plays Natalie Conners, a teen whose father has developed an army of Nanobots which have the power to destroy the planet. Muniz' Cody Banks has to get close to Natalie in order to get close to her father, which isn't easy considering that Cody seems to go all spastic whenever he has to talk to a girl.

Release Date: March 14, 2003
Co-Starring: Frankie Munez(Cody Banks)
Angie Harmon(Ronica Miles)
Written By: Ashley Miller
Zack Stentz
Scott Alexander
Larry Karaszewski
Directed By: Harald Zwart
Hilary Plays:Natalie Conners, daughter of a scientist developing a deadly fleet of Nanobots with the power to destroy the planet. Natalie also happens to be the girl Cody is in love with, though she has no idea he's even alive.

How did you first hear about the film Agent Cody Banks?
HD: Frankie was telling me about this really cool teenage spy action movie he was going to do. He said, "Yeah, there's this really cool girl part," and I was like, "Oh really? That's cool." It sounded pretty exciting. Then my manager called about a week later and said there was a great part in this teenage James Bond movie and thought I would be really cool in it. When I read the script, I just begged, "Please let me do it! I want to do it so much."

How would you describe your character?
HD: Natalie is a normal 14-year-old girl. When she first meets Cody, he gets shy and starts stuttering and asking really dumb questions. She dosen't want to have anything to do with him. Later, of course, Natalie realizes that Cody is actually pretty great. At one point, Natalie says, "Cody, you make a really bad first impression, and a really terrible second impression, but the third time is kind of nice." Natalie's life is divided between two seperateworlds. She cooks and cleans and helps do all that stuff for her dad at home. She worries he works too much and she doesn't get to spend enough time with him. But then she has a really good life at school. She has friends and is pretty confident. I loved my character. She was such a cool girl. She was so independent, because she didn't have a very strong family life and she was kind of like the parent in the family because she's didn't have a mom. She was the popular girl at school that every guy wanted. She's a really cool chracter and I did get to do a couple of action things, like run up the side of a car. So it was fun.

Frankie Muniz had, of course, appeared on Lizzie McGuire. What was it like working with him again?
HD: It was really cool. He did a great job in the movie. He was so into it, and he worked for two months before on all the stunts that he did.

But, as you said, you were involved with some of the action, too.
HD: What I liked about thi role is that it was a totally different character from Lizzie McGuire. Lizzie is the kind of shy girl trying to find her way through life, but Natalie is really popular and independent. But doing a big action movie for my first feature film was a good thing. This movie is so action-packed. Every single day on the set there are these big explosions. And it is really cool to see how that worked; how they could put it together. There could be an explosion this close to us, and I would feel so safe because they knew how to do everything and, like, aim it where they want to aim it and blow everything up. It was cool. I didn't really play a spy, so I didn't have any big fighting scenes. But I did deal with a lot of explosions. And there is this one part in which Arnold Vosloo, from The Mummy, is one of the bad guys and he was kidnapping me. We run outside behind this kitchen and he is getting ready to throw me in a car. So I climbed up the side of the car so he couldn't get me in there. That was a lot of fun.

Was making the film pretty much how you expected it to be?
HD: I never thought that I would be able to do any of this. We came out to California from Texas and we would audition and stuff. I got Lizzie McGuire and I thought, "Wow, this is cool. This is awesome. This is what I've wanted to do." Then, once the show got kind of popular, I did Cody Banks and I was like, "Wow, this is really cool!"