Miley Cyrus kept every penny of the money she earned as a child star

Miley Cyrus kept "every penny" of the money she earned as a child star.

The 33-year-old singer/actress shot to fame as a teenager after landing the starring role in Disney Channel TV series Hannah Montana, which ran between 2006 and 2011, and the show also helped her launch a successful music career - and Miley has now insisted she didn't have to deal with the burden of supporting her family because they didn't need her income to "survive".

She told Variety: "My parents didn’t need me to be famous to survive or to be stable. What happens to a lot of these kids is their parents want it more than they do, or the kids become responsible for the entire income of the family.

"That was never my job. Every penny I ever made went into my bank account because my parents were good."

Miley went on to insist she was also protected when she was working on Hannah Montana because her musician dad Billy Ray Cyrus was on set with her every day as he was cast as her onscreen father.

She explained: " My dad was on set every single day, so there was nothing that could happen that he wouldn’t know about. There was never a time where I was going to be alone in that dressing room."

In the interview, Miley admitted her dad nearly flunked his audition because he was busy promoting other actors who he thought would be better for the part.

Miley said: "He goes out into the parking lot, grabs other dads, brings them into Disney and is like, ‘You should hire this guy! He’s a great actor!' And my mom was behind him, squeezing his back, saying: ‘Shut up! We need you to get the role so we can all move out here!'"

She added of her onscreen work with her dad: "My dad always says, ‘When you knock ’em out, you don’t need a judge.’ We knocked ’em out.

"It was so obvious, after all the other dads, that you can’t fake the kind of connection that we have. The inside jokes, the nicknames, the handshakes, singing the songs together. It was a TKO."