May 9 (UPI) -- Actress and director Haylie Duff will star in the upcoming Lifetime movie Pretty Hurts, which premieres June 28.
Duff portrays mother and former beauty queen, Julie, who is guiding her daughter, Lauren (Sarah Borne), through a pageant. Lauren enters reluctantly in the hope of winning the money she needs to attend her dream college.
"While Julie is eager to relive the glory of her own pageant days and share one last bonding experience with her daughter, Lauren is thrust into a dark, toxic world of cutthroat competition and psychological manipulation, all hidden behind bleached white smiles and rhinestone gowns," the official synopsis reads. "Too preoccupied with the pageant, Lauren doesn't realize that her best friend Rae (Kaci Barker) is falling seriously ill with a potentially deadly but vaccine-preventable disease -- meningitis B -- prompting her to turn the pageant platform into a tool for awareness and education."
The movie received funding from the biopharma company GSK, and the film is meant to raise awareness about the disease as part of GSK's "Ask2BSure" campaign, according to a press release.
Duff is known for 7th Heaven and Napoleon Dynamite. She is sister to singer and actress Hilary Duff.
