When Miley Cyrus wanted to shift from the tween roles that have defined her career, her mother and co-manager started at the top. Rather than look for a pre-existing script, Tish Cyrus contacted bestselling author Nicholas Sparks ("The Notebook") and asked him to write something specifically for her daughter. "Sparks is an amazing, faith-based writer and a Christian and he writes about relationships with a family and there is nothing about sex or things I felt were wrong for her," she explains. Cyrus, 16, met with the writer to flesh out her character; she disclosed elements from her own life -- like her love for animals -- that Sparks incorporated in his work, which started as a screenplay and only later became "The Last Song," a best-selling novel. The movie version, with Cyrus, opens in April.

This film is like taking that first baby step away from 'Hannah Montana,'" Tish Cyrus notes. "It's just a baby step, but she's doing something different." Doing something different is one of many perfect moves the Cyrus team has made in building her career. Taken together, they're a textbook case on how to develop a young performer. While few young actors can hope to emulate Cyrus' success, the 5,000 members of the Screen Actors Guild who are younger than 18 will face many of the same decisions that affect whether they succeed or fail.

Speak to agents, managers, producers and studio executives and they will tell you several key elements go into crafting a young actor's career: picking the right team; handling money astutely; maintaining an education trajectory; and diversifying away from roles that too narrowly define the performer.

The first step in building a career, of course, is finding the right management. "It's important to choose a representative who knows how to make career decisions slowly," says Cyrus' co-manager, Jason Morey. "You have to have someone who has a plan," adds Frederick Levy, the owner of a talent firm, Management 101, and the author of "Acting in Young Hollywood." Cyrus was lucky to have a father, singer-actor Billy Ray Cyrus, involved in show business and a mother immersed in her work. But parents can be a two-edged sword: If parents become what Levy calls "the momagers and popagers," trouble looms. "I like the parents most who look at acting as if they have a kid on a soccer team or baseball team," says producer Matt Dearborn, who has had shows on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel, including the new "Zeke and Luther" on Disney XD.

"It gets problematic when they start reading scripts or complain about parking spaces." Others with prominent stage parents -- like Katherine Heigl, who started out as a child performer and whose mother has continued to work closely with her -- have proved mixed blessings. Indeed, sources say that in Heigl's case, one management company told her to choose between the firm and her mother. When Cyrus' career began to blossom, her mother got the best advice she could on who should represent her daughter. Dolly Parton suggested Morey Management Group and its patriarch, Jim Morey; his son, Jason, began managing Cyrus' career, along with her mother.