Lindsay Lohan Biography



Actress and singer

Born Lindsay Morgan Lohan, July 2, 1986, in Long Island, NY; daughter of Michael (a salesman and actor) and Dina (an actress, dancer, analyst, and talent manager) Lohan.

Addresses: Office —LL Rocks, Inc., PMB 179, 223 Wall St., Huntington, NY 11743-2060. Website —http://www.llrocks.com.

Career

Actress in films, including: The Parent Trap, 1998; Freaky Friday, 2003; Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, 2004; Mean Girls, 2004; Herbie: Fully Loaded, 2005; Just My Luck, 2005. Television appearances include: Another World, NBC, 1996-97; Guiding Light, CBS; Healthy Kids, The Family Channel; Life-Size (movie), 2000; Bette, CBS, 2000; Get a Clue (movie), Disney Channel, 2002; King of the Hill (voice), 2004; MTV Movie Awards (host), 2004; Saturday Night Live (host), NBC, 2004; That '70s Show, Fox, 2004. Signed five-album production deal with Emilio Estefan, Jr., 2002; signed record contract with Casablanca Records, 2004; released Speak, 2004. Appeared in television commercials as a child for companies such as The Gap, Jell-O, and Pizza Hut; modeled for Abercrombie & Fitch Kids and Calvin Klein Kids.

Awards: Young Artist award for best leading young actress in a feature film, for The Parent Trap, c. 1998; MTV Movie Award, breakthrough female, for Freaky Friday, 2004.

Lindsay Lohan

Sidelights

With her first film as a child actress, 1998's The Parent Trap, Lindsay Lohan (pronounced LOW-han) had box office success. After appearing in a number of television productions as she made the transition from child to teenager, she made several successful films as a teen actress. They included Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, both hits at the box office. Lohan also tried to launch a career as a singer, signing a recording contract with music guru Tommy Mottola. After contributing tracks to several film soundtracks, she released her first album, Speak, in 2004.

Born July 2, 1986, in Long Island, New York, she is the oldest child of Michael and Dina Lohan. Her father is a one-time Wall Street trader who also worked as an entrepreneur and in food sales, selling products like pasta. Her mother had been an actress, dancer, and one-time Rockette, who later worked as a Wall Street analyst. When her daughter's career took off, Dina Lohan became her manager. Lohan's younger siblings—two brothers, Michael and Dakota, known as Cody, and a sister Aliana—also had acting and modeling careers.

Growing up in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, Lohan began her modeling career when she was a toddler. She signed to the Ford Modeling Agency at the age of three in 1989, allegedly the first redheaded child model taken on by the agency. She modeled for companies such as Calvin Klein Kids and Abercrombie & Fitch Kids. As a youngster, Lohan also appeared in more than 60 television commercials. She appeared with Bill Cosby in a commercial for Jell-O, as well as commercials for The Gap, Wendy's, and Pizza Hut.

By the time Lohan was ten years old, she was transitioning into acting roles, though she never took an acting class or studied the craft. In 1996, she landed a recurring role on the daytime soap opera Another World ; Lohan spent a year playing Ali Fowler. She also had a role on Guiding Light and appeared with her mother on the Family Channel series Healthy Kids.

Lohan had her first big break in 1998 when she had the starring role in the film remake of The Parent Trap. The original was made in 1961 and starred Hayley Mills. As Mills did, Lohan played both leads, identical twins Hallie and Annie Parker. The Parker twins were separated at birth by their parents when they divorced, and raised in different countries. One was raised in Great Britain, the other in the United States. Each did not know about the other's existence until they meet up at a summer camp. After overcoming an initial dislike and then realizing they are twins, the girls try to get their parents back together by switching their identities and living with their non-custodial parent. They reveal the deception before their father gets engaged to another woman, but continue their quest.

Lohan beat out 4,000 other actresses to get the role. Her whole family came along when she did the six-month shoot to keep her life as normal as possible. Each member of her family had a cameo role in The Parent Trap. The shoot was demanding since Lohan had to remember both characters' lines and do movements exactly the same twice in each scene the twins appeared in to create the illusion. The dual images were put together with a computer to complete the scene. All of Lohan's hard work paid off since the film made more than $66 million in the United States alone.

After the success of The Parent Trap, Lohan focused on school. She continued to attend public schools, including Cold Spring Harbor High School. Eventually the demands of her career compelled her to turn to home schooling to complete her education. Though her education took up much of her time for several years, she continued to work as an actress.

Much of Lohan's work from 2000 to 2003 was in television. In 2000, she had a leading role in the television movie Life-Size. It co-starred model Tyra Banks, whose Barbie-doll character comes to life. The movie originally aired as part of The Wonderful World of Disney, and was later released on home video. In 2002, Lohan appeared in another television movie. She played Lexy Gold on a Disney Channel movie called Get a Clue.

Lohan also tried to move into series television. In the 2000 pilot for the CBS situation comedy Bette, a vehicle for actress and singer Bette Midler, Lohan played her daughter. The pilot was shot in New York City and the show was picked up by the network. However, when producers decided to move the production to Los Angeles, Lohan did not want to move with it, so she gave up the role. Lohan's part was taken over by another actress, but the situation comedy was soon canceled.

In 2003, Lohan returned to features. Her next film, Freaky Friday, was also a remake. Based on a novel published in 1972, the original film was made in 1976 and starred Jodie Foster in the role Lohan would play. In the film, Lohan played Annabelle (Anna), a teenager who wants to be a rock star. Her psychotherapist mother Tess Coleman, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, is about to re-marry. Suffering from communication problems, the pair somehow switch bodies for a day. The switch forces them to walk in the other person's shoes and creates many comic situations. The film was praised by critics, and earned more than $100 million at the box office. Freaky Friday also marked the debut of Lohan as professional singer. Her song, "Ultimate," appeared on the Freaky Friday soundtrack.

Lohan had two feature films released in 2004, both teen comedies. The first was Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, based on the novel by Dyan Sheldon. Lohan played Mary, a teenager who moves from New York City to New Jersey after her parents' divorce. Lohan's character changes her name to Lola and creates a number of schemes to get attention, including befriending a famous rock star and helping her new best friend deal with bullying girls at school. Lohan also contributed four songs to the film's soundtrack. Confessions was not particularly well-received.

Lohan had a bigger hit with Mean Girls, penned by Saturday Night Live head writer Tina Fey. The screenplay was based on the book Queen Bees & Wannabes by Rosalind Wiseman. Lohan played Cady Heron, a naïve girl who was home schooled in Africa by her zoologist parents. The family comes back to the United States so that Cady can attend high school. She finds herself dealing with the intricacies of high school cliques. As part of an experiment, she becomes part of the popular set of girls, dubbed "The Plastics." However, Cady gets caught up in her newfound popularity and, for a time, becomes just as mean as the rest of the popular girls.

Mean Girls received much critical praise and was a hit at the box office. The number-one film in the United States the week it opened, it went on to earn more than $86 million. Lohan's performance as Cady was particularly praised, and she was seen as a film star. Industry expert Paul Dergarabedian told People, "This really puts her on the map as far as being a box office draw."

After the release of Mean Girls, Lohan remained in the public eye. In 2004, she became the youngest person ever to host the MTV Movie Awards. At the ceremony, she also showed she could dance. Later in the year, she was the guest host in an episode of Saturday Night Live. Dating actor Wilmer Valderrama of the hit situation comedy That '70s Show for several months brought Lohan tabloid press attention.

The tabloids also followed Lohan around for other reasons. She allegedly had a public feud with another young actress/singer, Hilary Duff, over a common boyfriend both had. There was also speculation on whether Lohan had plastic surgery, including breast augmentation. Lohan's family situation was also tense and drew press attention. Her father had served time in prison for securities fraud, and had been arrested several times in the early 2000s for assault. Dina Lohan took out a restraining order against her husband and filed for divorce in 2005. Lohan told Gill Pringle of the Observer, "People try and dramatize every little thing I do, and it's hard dealing with stuff and having my friends read about me and them calling and being like, 'OK, I know this isn't true, but I just have to ask .' It's weird, but you deal with it."

Lohan also focused on her singing career. She contributed a song, "I Decide," to the Princess Diaries 2 soundtrack, and looked to record a full album. After signing a five-album production deal with Emilio Estefan, Jr. in 2002, and recording several demos, she signed with Casablanca Records in 2004. Casablanca was run by the former head of Sony Records, Tommy Mottola, who took charge of Lohan's recording career. In addition to singing, Lohan wanted to write her own songs and had a publishing deal arranged by Mottola as well.

In December of 2004, Lohan released her first record, Speak, which had a rock, pop, and urban feel. She co-wrote five of the songs on the record, with lyrics inspired by her life. Though the first single "Rumors" reached number 23 on Billboard 's Top 40 charts, the album and single were not highly regarded by critics. While some believed that Lohan could sing well enough, they found the material generic, second rate, and not fitting with her personality. As Jim Farber of the Daily News wrote, "What Lohan's album really needed was more of the sass—not to mention the tune—of Ashley Simpson's CD, a worthy album regardless of Simpson's actual input. After all, you don't need great talent to make a fun teen-pop album. You just need to have fun."

Having a singing career remained secondary to Lohan's acting career. In 2004 and early 2005, she shot several more films including a remake of Disney's Herbie the Love Bug called Herbie: Fully Loaded. Lohan also appeared in Just My Luck, as the title character. She played the luckiest woman in the world who loses this touch. Lohan remained in demand as an actress and had many other film roles lined up, including Fashionistas, Dramarama, and Gossip Girl.

Lohan also had a life outside of work. Having completed high school by home schooling, Lohan moved to Los Angeles by 2004 and lived with fellow young star Raven for a time before buying her own home. She also talked about going to college, perhaps to study entertainment law. But for the immediate future, Lohan remained focused on acting, and hoped to move beyond the teen roles she was currently doing. Lohan told Jamie Portman of the Ottawa Citizen, "This, acting, is what I aspired to do. It's what I want to do in life. It's what I want my career to be. So to just kind of put it aside right now and leave it to go to college when this is what I want to do ... I can't do that yet."

Selected discography

(Contributor) Freaky Friday (soundtrack), Hollywood Records, 2003.

(Contributor) Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (soundtrack), Hollywood Records, 2004.

(Contributor) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (soundtrack), Disney, 2004.

Speak, Casablanca Records, 2004.

Sources

Books

Celebrity Biographies, Baseline II, 2005.

Periodicals

Associated Press, January 19, 2005.

Billboard, December 18, 2004.

Daily News (New York, NY), May 26, 2004, p. 32; June 20, 2004, p. 3; December 7, 2004, p. 49.

Los Angeles Times, December 7, 2004, p. E8; December 7, 2004, p. E1.

Observer (London, England), June 13, 2004, p. 32.

Ottawa Citizen, April 28, 2004, p. E6.

People, August 24, 1998, p. 70; May 24, 2004, pp. 79-80; July 12, 2004, p. 51; September 6, 2004, p. 70; November 8, 2004, p. 26; November 22, 2004, p. 21; December 13, 2004, p. 46; December 20, 2004, p. 70.

Sacramento Bee, June 7, 2004, p. E1.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), August 2, 1998, p. 6F.

Toronto Star, August 10, 2003, p. D4.

USA Today, December 6, 2004, p. 1D.

Variety, July 27, 1998, p. 51; July 28, 2003, p. 27; February 23, 2004, p. 34.

—A. Petruso



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