Cyrus hopes daughter won’t end up like Paris

updated 3:38 p.m. ET June 22, 2007

NEW YORK - Billy Ray Cyrus is crossing his fingers that his daughter, “Hannah Montana” star Miley, won’t go the way of Lindsay and Paris and Britney. He even shows her articles about the Hollywood troublemakers as cautionary tales.

So far, so good.

“The biggest phenomenon in all this is that the kid’s been able to keep her head on her shoulders,” the 45-year-old country singer tells People magazine in its new issue. “She hasn’t flipped out. I’m going to knock on wood.”

He adds: “I pray every day she can stay on that path.”

Cyrus, who recently completed a stint on ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars,” co-stars with 14-year-old Miley on the hit Disney Channel series “Hannah Montana,” about a country-girl-turned-pop-star who tries to keep her celebrity life a secret from her classmates.

Miley, who saw her “Hannah Montana” soundtrack go double platinum last year, is a daddy’s girl at heart.

“We’re really close,” she says. “I feel like I can tell my dad anything. When we come home, we forget that we even work together and just hang out.”

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“It’s the same with Miley as it is with all my kids,” replies Cyrus, a Kentucky native and Los Angeles-based father of five children with wife Leticia. “I try to be their best friend. ... It’s a real fine line, and thus far, it’s a line I’ve been able to walk.”

Cyrus aims to keep life “as normal as possible” for Miley, who’s enrolled in a public school that allows her to study on the set of her show and come in for exams on Fridays. His heart went out to her, however, when she went to a friend’s dance and “pretended it was her prom, because she doesn’t go to a regular school.”

“It made me sad,” he recalls. “I get freaky just thinking about it. I feel sorry for her sometimes. She sacrifices a lot for this.”

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