This week's release of Freakier Friday — a sequel to the beloved 2003 body swap comedy — marks the culmination of a huge journey for Lindsay Lohan. She has experienced a personal and professional rollercoaster in the two decades since she first played teen rocker Anna Coleman, but she's now back on top and looking ahead to her Hollywood future.
Lohan's career started at a very early age, signing with a model agency at the age of three and making her major screen debut in 1996 as a 10-year-old in the NBC soap opera Another World. She became a breakout Hollywood star just a few years later when she portrayed twins in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. Critics showered the young Lohan with acclaim for her dual performance.
Then came Freaky Friday and, a year later, the teen idol one-two punch of Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen and stone-cold classic Mean Girls. Suddenly, Lohan was a star — balancing her screen roles with a burgeoning music career. This turned her into an object of tabloid fascination, which is where things started to go a little sour.
As the 2000s continued, Lohan's movies became punching bags for critics. She got a Razzie nomination for romcom Just My Luck and then won two Razzies for her dual role in the psychological thriller I Know Who Killed Me. Around this time, reports emerged that she was difficult to work with, coupled with constant tabloid reports about her late-night partying.
"I don’t ever want my family to experience being chased by the paparazzi the way I was," Lohan reflected in a 2025 interview with The Times. "They were terrifying moments I had in my life – I have PTSD to the extreme from those things. The most invasive situations. Really scary. And I pray stuff like that never comes back. It’s not safe. It’s not fair."
In January 2007, Lohan had her first stay in a rehab facility. By 2014, she had spent more than 250 days in some form of rehab centre. During this time, Lohan had several run-ins with the law and spent a handful of very short stints in jail. In a 2013 interview with Oprah Winfrey, she explained that alcohol was her vice of choice, but that other substances were involved too. "[Cocaine] allowed me to drink more," she said. "I think that's why I did it when I did it. It was a party thing."
Her film work was minimal during this period, with small roles in the likes of Machete and Scary Movie 5 — in which she played herself. Paul Schrader's erotic thriller The Canyons arrived in 2013, handing Lohan a lead role alongside porn actor James Deen. While the movie was savaged by critics, Lohan earned some praise, with The New Yorker dubbing her performance "electrifyingly alive".
In 2014, Lohan fronted an eight-part docuseries about her life, entitled Lindsay. Her work over the next decade mostly consisted of TV guest roles and reality TV appearances, though her major comeback was on the horizon.
It was Netflix that helped Lohan back into the spotlight, announcing in 2021 that she would front a festive romcom for the streamer. Falling for Christmas came around in 2022, with Lohan starring as a hotel heiress who suffers amnesia after a skiing accident and finds herself falling in love with Chord Overstreet's lodge owner.
The movie hit the perfect sweet spot for Netflix's campy Christmas oeuvre, with IndieWire referring to it as "the Citizen Kane of Netflix Christmas Movies". It soared to the top of Netflix's most-watched lists, and so it was little surprise to see Lohan reteam with the streamer in 2024 for both Irish Wish and Our Little Secret. Lohan has gone from teen idol to tabloid fixture to queen of the Netflix romcom.
Freakier Friday essentially brings her career full circle, marking a reset that the star hopes will power her transition into more dramatic roles — something she previously attempted in the late 2000s. "I was so thrilled to work on [2006 Robert Altman movie] A Prairie Home Companion, and yet even today I have to fight for stuff that is like that, which is frustrating," she told The Times.
Lohan added: "Because, well, you know me as this – but you also know I can do that. So let me. Give me the chance. I have to break that cycle and open doors to something else, leaving people no choice. And in due time, if Martin Scorsese reaches out, I’m not going to say no."
You know what to do, Marty. That would be quite the comeback.
Freakier Friday is in UK cinemas from 8 August.
This article originally appeared on Yahoo Movies UK at https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/lindsay-lohan-comeback-freakier-friday-mean-girls-105314874.html
Post a Comment