Miley Cyrus and Liam Hemsworth The Last Song Press Conference

How difficult was it for you to channel your inner rebel?
Miley Cyrus: "I just got to drop the guard for a little while and throw all the fits that I wanted to for the past year, on screen. It was fun to be able to not have to go into work and necessarily do what was on the page. I felt like Julie Ann gave us the freedom to add our own things and, if something didn’t feel comfortable, I would say, 'Oh, I don’t think that’s right.' With anything that was going on, with the set or with what we were wearing or the way that we looked, I felt really involved.

I think it made it easier, to not just have to look at the page and do exactly what was there, but have the space to be able to grow and add our own personal thing to the character."

In what aspect were you most able to identify with this character?

Miley Cyrus: "I was glad I got to have some part in [the] music in the film. It wasn’t necessarily singing, which is what everyone always wants to put me into. It’s always, 'Let’s give her a singing role,' and I didn’t necessarily want to do that. I don’t want that to always be the thing that I lean on. But, I definitely relate to the music, and the animals were really cool. There were things that were a little bit of me within the character, but it was also really different. I think the music was probably the main thing that I related to."

You had to learn piano, right?

Miley Cyrus: "Yes. I said to Julie Ann, 'It’s so hard. I had to take two whole lessons.' And she was like, 'You picked it up in two lessons?' And I was like, 'I know! It was so difficult!' She was like, 'Wow, it takes most people a really long time.'"

"But, I guess because I’m just used to playing instruments and I’m not really scared to sound like crap, at the beginning. It started out kind of messy, but I got better and better. By the end of the movie, I think I actually had the song down. It took me a while. I did okay. It was Greg [Kinnear] that didn’t keep up with his lessons. He never practiced and it was really bad."

Liam, you’ve made the transition from soap operas to films, and you had to learn to scuba dive and play volleyball for this. What was the biggest challenge for you in making this film?

Liam Hemsworth: "Volleyball was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. Before we started shooting they asked me, 'Do you play volleyball?' and I said, 'Yeah, no problem.' And I turned up for the first day of volleyball practice and I was honestly really scared to shoot the volleyball part because it takes a lot of skills to play that game and I didn’t have them - at all. I said to Julie Ann, 'I think we’re going to need a double,' but it’s hard to find someone as big as me. We had days where it was just us, and we were playing pretty good against extras who hadn’t played before. We looked okay then. But we had a day where we had 300 extras there, watching us play against professional volleyball players, and they made us look stupid. I throw a spike down, and expecting it to hit its end, and turn around and hi-five my buddy and I look back and the ball is coming back."

Miley, your character finds happiness through faith, love and friendship. What does faith mean to you?

Miley Cyrus: "I think faith can be anything. It can be believing in yourself, or if you believe there’s a higher being that’s watching over you. It can be anything, but it’s just having something to lean on and that’s what Ronnie didn’t have. I think that’s the reason she was so sad before. If you’re living a lonely life, that’s how you’re going to feel. You’re going to feel like you can’t accomplish anything and you’re not good enough. Just by having someone to lean on, with Will (Liam Hemsworth) and her dad (Greg Kinnear), and new friendships, that was the biggest thing. Faith is just having someone to lean on."

What did you like about filming on Tybee Island?

Miley Cyrus: "I would move to Tybee Island, just to eat there all the time. I definitely put on a little weight when I got there. It was awesome. I definitely want to go back to Tybee. I like being in the South, but near the beach. There was some pizza, and there was definitely a lot of food. I would probably just move there to eat, and then have my other location be L.A."

How did you keep from making this performance too melodramatic?

Miley Cyrus: "Julie Ann helped me with that the most. Because this was my first film, the first thing I did when I saw a sad scene was think, 'Okay, my character would cry, that’s what I would do.' And, she was like, 'No, the whole end of the film, the next 40 minutes of it can’t just be crying. There has to be some type of dimension to it.' That was the biggest thing that I learned."

"You have to go deeper than that and realize what it’s going to be like when you are watching an hour and a half film. You don’t just want to see one type of emotion. You want to see her getting through it, putting up her guard and trying to have strength. That was the biggest thing. Nicholas [Sparks] could have feared having me come on board because I wasn’t as experienced, but Julie Ann helped me do that. The crying scenes were easy. When she was torn up and sad, it was easy to bring tears and cry. But it’s a little bit harder to find something beyond that, and be able to see it in your eyes and your body language, and not necessarily just the obvious."

Miley, why did you decide to stop posting on Twitter?

Miley Cyrus: "I was just tired of telling everyone what I’m doing. I hate when I read things and celebrities are complaining, 'I have no personal life!' I’m like, 'Well, that’s because you write about everything that you’re doing.' I was that person that’s like, 'I’m so sad. I have no real, normal life. Everyone knows what I’m doing.' But that was my fault because I was telling everyone. I would Tweet, 'I’m here,' and then wonder why a thousand fans were outside of the restaurant. Well, hello, you just told them. I thought that it didn’t really make much sense, and everything that I was saying wasn’t really going with what I was putting on the Internet. It was lame."