The Oscar-nominated 2004 role Lindsay Lohan wasn’t allowed to audition for
The issues that Lindsay Lohan experienced when attempting to navigate the path from Disney Channel starlet to respected adult actor are well-documented; basically, it was a complete disaster, personally and professionally.
Like so many child stars before and after her, Lohan had known nothing other than being in the public gaze, having been signed up as a model at the ludicrous age of three, and although she had all the trappings that a decade of combining hit movies and musical success provided, she had no idea how to operate in a grown-ups market.
At first, though, things looked promising. As she turned 18, despite dealing with a ravenous thirst from the paparazzi and being, along with Britney Spears, the most written about and photographed celebrity of the early 2000s, Lohan had a two-million-selling album, Speak, and had just had another enormous Disney-backed box office hit with Freaky Friday opposite Jamie Lee Curtis.
But she was tasked with making the transition from kids hero to proper actor; Disney stated that they wouldn’t be making any more films with her in the lead role after the release of 2005’s Herbie: Fully Loaded, and Lohan was starting to get frustrated at being passed over for roles that casting directors viewed as too adult for her.
One of those was a 2004 film from The Graduate director Mike Nichols and written by former Alan Partridge actor Patrick Marber, starring Julia Roberts, Jude Law and Clive Owen. Bemoaning the fact she couldn’t seem to land the kind of roles that would help her move forward with her career, Lohan told the LA Times in 2005: “I would have liked to have read for Closer.”
The role Lohan would have taken in that film went to Natalie Portman, the former Star Wars actor who had found fame as a teen herself thanks to an unerring performance in Luc Besson’s Leon in 1994. Portman’s work in Nichols’ movie as a stripper caught up in a relationship between a writer and a photographer was impressive enough to earn her an Academy Award nomination for ‘Best Supporting Actress’.
Closer was also very successful at the box office, making almost $100m in profit, while Lohan looked on enviously at other young female talents like Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley, who were having critical success for challenging roles without the drawbacks of a Disney upbringing.
Lohan added: “I work just as hard as those people and sometimes [the media] make it seem that they’re more mature because their fan base is more mature and my fan base is younger … so they’re writing about me going out all the time. It’s easy to over-publicize me.”
The media’s portrayal of Lohan as a hard-drinking party girl began to bleed over into the parts she was getting. In a 2006 film called Georgia Rule, Lohan was sent a letter by the CEO of the production company warning her about her lifestyle and calling her “discourteous, irresponsible and unprofessional,” which then got leaked to the press.
Lohan ended up hospitalised and then in rehab, before a string of flops culminated in 2007’s I Know Who Killed Me, a film in which she did finally get to play a stripper, but which was panned by everyone.
Across the next five years, she struggled to get her career back, although she did have some more music success. Her highest profile movies were Robert Rodriguez’s Machete in 2010, and then the low-budget erotic thriller The Canyons in 2013, in which she starred opposite porn actor James Deen.
Now she appears to finally be on track as she enters her 40s; her sequel to Freaky Friday was a success last year, and she is set to star in a new TV series called Count My Lies, which will air in 2027.
