FIRST PERSON WITH LILO: I met Lindsay Lohan for the first time on the day of this interview, in a borrowed luxury townhouse on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York.
She was wearing bright striped pajamas, smoking a cigarette and talking very fast.
‘Shall we do it on the patio?’ she suggested. ‘I want some fresh air.’
We sat outside, and for the next 90 minutes she unburdened herself to me.
Lindsay was extraordinarily candid, never shirked a question and made me laugh as much as she made me wince.
She’s had a truly exceptional, varied and strange life.
Born in New York in 1986, she became a model at three, a soap actress at seven and a bona fide movie star at ten, when she landed the lead role in The Parent Trap alongside Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson.
By the time she was 19, she’d become a virtual Hollywood veteran and was earning huge money.
But then her life, and career, fell apart amid a slew of lurid headlines about her off-screen antics.
She was busted twice for drunk-driving and cocaine abuse, she breached her parole and was jailed for 90 days, eventually serving two weeks in prison.
She had a lengthy lesbian relationship with an English singer-songwriter called Samantha Ronson.
She was accused of stealing a necklace from an LA store (she was convicted, but a judge later commuted the theft charge to a ‘misdemeanor’).
And she’s had multiple visits to rehab centers for various treatments.
Lindsay’s life has thus become a soap opera, with much of the drama surrounding her father Michael, a combustible former Wall Street trader prone to violence, drink and drug abuse, and who has twice been to jail.
In turn, he refutes any accusations of being a bad father, and blames Lindsay’s mother, Dina.
She – a former singer and dancer – brought up their four children virtually single-handed for much of their childhood.
Whatever you think of her, whatever you’ve read or heard about her, the Lindsay Lohan I met seemed to me to be a damaged, vulnerable young woman struggling to find normality in her often tormented life.
On the day we conducted this interview, Lindsay was just a few weeks away from starting a new, compulsory three-month stint in rehab.
PM So, Lindsay, how are you?
LL I’m good, thank you (lights another cigarette).
The Parent Trap turned you into a huge movie star at a very young age. If I had the power to take you back in time and say to you, ‘Lindsay, you failed that audition and you’re not going to be a movie star after all’, would you take that option, after all you’ve been through?
I would have been so angry!
But would your life have been better?
No, I believe things happen for a reason.
You don’t regret anything?
No, I live without regrets. There are certain things I have done, mistakes that I made, that I would change, but I don’t regret them at all, because I’ve learnt from them.
Does fame screw you up?
Yes, I think to a certain extent. But it comes with the territory, so I can’t complain about it.
Is it like a drug?
(Laughs) I don’t know that it’s like a drug, but in some ways it can be like that, because it’s addictive. I’m at my happiest when I’m on a movie set. It’s like therapy for me. (Read the rest … including views on rehab, being an addict, her lesbian relationship … here)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 11 Issue 37
Pub: May 7, 2013