Lindsay Lohan

Lindsay Lohan (born July 2, 1986, Bronx, New York, U.S.) is an American actress, singer, and producer who started out as a child actress and went on to become an A-list star with such films as Mean Girls (2004). Her career faltered during her 20s when she had a series of criminal run-ins and incidents of drug and alcohol misuse, but, after a break from Hollywood, she made a return to acting in her 30s.

Early life, first acting roles, and The Parent Trap

Lohan is the eldest of four children born to Michael Lohan, an investment banker, and Donata “Dina” Lohan (née Sullivan), a Wall Street analyst. In the late 1980s Michael Lohan received a four-year prison sentence in a stock fraud case, which was followed by other legal troubles. He was consequently absent for years at a time. Lindsay Lohan, meanwhile, began her professional career at age three when she signed with Ford Models and went on to appear in more than 60 TV commercials and a number of print ads. Between 1996 and 1997 she secured her first recurring television role on the long-running soap opera Another World. Her extensive resume helped Lohan land the part of twin sisters plotting to reunite their divorced parents in Nancy Meyers’s 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. The Disney movie, which was filmed on a $15 million budget, was a hit, earning more than $92 million worldwide at the box office. Lohan subsequently starred in the Disney movies Life-Size (2000), Get a Clue (2002), Freaky Friday (2003) alongside Jamie Lee Curtis, and Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (2004).

Mean Girls and celebrity

By the time Lohan turned 18, she was a star, and her celebrity only increased with the movie Mean Girls (2004), written by Tina Fey, who also appeared as a supporting character. The film was a hit with critics and fans alike. Lohan parlayed her fame into a music career, releasing her debut album, Speak, that same year. Her incredible success and her penchant for going to nightclubs made her a favorite subject of the paparazzi, and her moves were excessively scrutinized by the media. Her father, meanwhile, continued to have run-ins with the law, drawing unfavorable attention to the actress. Lohan nonetheless remained upbeat, as Rolling Stone reported in 2004. She told the magazine, “He’s the best dad. He’s the most loving, kind person you could ever meet. My parents are working some things out right now. But they’ve been married for twenty years. They’ll work it out.” Lohan returned to Disney in 2005, starring in another remake, Herbie: Fully Loaded, which generated $144 million in sales on an estimated $50 million budget. In 2006 she starred in the rom-com Just My Luck and then joined the ensemble casts of A Prairie Home Companion and the Robert F. Kennedy biopic Bobby.

Public struggles

Lohan’s movies from 2007 included Chapter 27, I Know Who Killed Me, and Georgia Rule. Reports during filming suggested the actress was difficult to work with on set; the media described chronic tardiness and unpredictable behavior. At the beginning of the year she joined a drug rehab program for the first time, but in July she was charged with possession of cocaine and driving under the influence. She subsequently began a years-long cycle of legal troubles that were compounded by a battle with drug and alcohol misuse. Meanwhile, her family also made headlines: her father with his continued brushes with the law and her parents with their turbulent divorce proceedings. Lohan tried to continue to work, appearing in such movies as Labor Pains (2009), Machete (2010), Liz & Dick (2012), Love, Marilyn (2012), and The Canyons (2013). Her career, however, was largely hobbled by jail time, probation, rehab, and erratic behavior. In 2011 she agreed to pose nude for Playboy for close to $1 million. The magazine’s founder, Hugh Hefner, said that the spread helped Playboy break sales records.

Theater, break from acting, and other endeavors

In 2014 Lohan turned to theater, appearing in a revival of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow in London’s West End. The Guardian wrote about her performance, “Anyone who turned up expecting Ms Lohan, making her stage debut at the age of 28, to exhibit spoilt-child celeb behaviour…was in for a disappointment. She was rather sweet, rather husky, rather wide-eyed—and rather good. She was, in fact, possibly the best thing about this show.” Lohan later described the production as a turning point in her life. She then began to spend more time at her residence in Dubai, where taking photographs of individuals without their consent can be illegal.

Although Lohan took a break from acting, she continued to draw headlines for erratic behavior and controversial comments, particularly about the Me Too movement. “I’m going to really hate myself for saying this,” she told The Times in 2018, “but I think by women speaking against all these things, it makes them look weak when they are very strong women.” Her struggles also continued to be scrutinized by the media, as when videos emerged on the Internet in 2016 showing an altercation between her and her then fiance, Russian entrepreneur Egor Tarabasov, suggesting that he was physically abusive toward the actress. Two years later the actress told The New York Times she had her revenge by opening the Lohan Beach House, a resort in Mýkonos, Greece, where one skirmish took place. The beach house venture was the subject of a reality show that aired on MTV in 2019. Meanwhile, Lohan quietly began to act again, appearing alongside Harry Potter star Rupert Grint in the second season (2018) of the British series Sick Note. Lohan also starred in the fantasy flick Among the Shadows (2019).

Netflix movies, marriage, and baby

In 2022 Lohan signed a deal with Netflix (which it termed the “Lindsay Lohan-aissance”) to star in and produce the movies Falling for Christmas (2022), Irish Wish (2024), and Our Little Secret (2024). In between films she married financier Bader Shammas, and the following year they announced a baby boy, Luai, Arabic for “shield or protector.”

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