Who’s That Woman

Posted by Riko Trihendrawan | August 1st 2009 | 2 Komentar

Lindsay Lohan, 23, is an American actress, model, and pop singer. Lindsay, born on July 2 1986, started in show business as a child fashion model for magazine advertisement and television commercials. At age 10, she began her acting career in the soap opera Another World; at 11, she made her motion picture debut by playing identical twins in Disney’s 1998 remake of The Parent Trap.

Lohan rose to stardom with her leading roles in the films Freaky Friday, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, Mean Girls and Herbie: Fully Loaded. Her subsequent roles include appearances in A Prairie Home Companion and Bobby. In 2004, Lohan launched a second career in pop music yielding the albums Speak (2004) and A Little More Personal (2005).

Lohan’s personal life has been a frequent subject of celebrity and tabloid journalism.

 

Early success

Lohan began her career with Ford Models at age three, but found little work as a fashion model. She persisted and eventually appeared in more than 100 print-ads for companies like Toys “R” Us. She also modeled for Calvin Klein Kids (usually with siblings Michael and Ali) and Abercrombie Kids.

Lohan’s first auditions for television work did not go well; by the time she tried out for a Duncan Hines commercial, she told her mother that she would give up if she did not get the job.She was hired, and went on to appear in over 60 commercials, including a Jell-O spot with Bill Cosby. Her ad work led to roles in soap operas, and she was already considered a show-business veteran in 1996 when she landed the role of Alexandra “Alli” Fowler on Another World, “where she delivered more dialogue than any other 10-year-old in daytime serials” of the time.

Lohan gave up Another World for the big screen when director Nancy Meyers cast her to play the dual roles of the estranged twin sisters who try to reunite their long-divorced parents (Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson) in the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap. Trap was well-received for a family comedy, bringing in US$92 million worldwide. Film critic Janet Maslin found Lohan’s dual performances so forceful “that she seems to have been taking shy violet lessons from Sharon Stone.” Critic Kenneth Turan called Lohan “the soul of this film as much as Hayley Mills was of the original, and … she is more adept than her predecessor at creating two distinct personalities”.

She starred in two original television movies, Life-Size (2000) (with Tyra Banks) and Get a Clue (2002). She also played Bette Midler’s daughter in the first episode of the short-lived series, Bette (2000), but Lohan, then 14, quit when the production moved from New York to Los Angeles. In 2001, she hosted the ABC-TV commercial series commemorating Walt Disney’s 100th birthday during a rebroadcast of The Parent Trap.

Rise to fame

Following a brief hiatus, Lohan won a lead role in another Disney remake: Freaky Friday (2003), starring Jamie Lee Curtis. Lohan’s character in the movie was originally written as a Goth, but she did not think anyone would relate to that, and decided to dress in a preppy style for her audition, and the character ended up being re-written. Through 2005, Friday was Lohan’s biggest commercial film success, earning US$160 million worldwide. In 2004, Lohan was given the lead in two films, Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen (her first feature that was not a remake) and Paramount’s Mean Girls, both released in 2004. Drama Queen was a modest success at the box office, grossing about US$30 million, but was a failure with critics. “Though still a promising star, Lohan will have to do a little penance before she’s forgiven for Confessions,” Robert K. Elder wrote.

Far more successful was Mean Girls, her first PG-13 (and first non-Disney) film. Her breakout lead performance pushed the critical and commercial hit to gross US$128 million worldwide, “cementing her status as the new teen movie queen,” wrote Brandon Gray. “Lohan dazzles us once more,” said Steve Rhodes. “The smartly written script is a perfect match for her intelligent brand of comedy.” Mean Girls was scripted by Tina Fey and featured several alumni of Saturday Night Live; Lohan was asked to host the show three times, in 2004, 2005, and 2006.

With Mean Girls Lohan’s public profile was raised significantly and paparazzi began following her. Lohan’s attitude to the paparazzi and tabloids is ambivalent. She has said that while she doesn’t ask them to follow her, if they’re not around she wonders if it means people are bored of her or no one cares anymore. Her manager worked with the paparazzi during the shooting of Labor Pains to encourage the media to show Lohan working, as opposed to partying.

In 2005, Lohan became the first living person to have a “My Scene Goes Hollywood” doll released by Mattel. She also voiced herself in the direct-to-DVD feature film based on the dolls.

Lohan returned to Disney in 2005 for Herbie: Fully Loaded, the fifth film in the Herbie series. Her popularity allowed her to choose from a wider variety of projects; Lohan felt the post-college character she portrayed in Herbie would help her make the transition into more grown-up roles. Fully Loaded earned US$144 million worldwide. Vanity Fair described Herbie as Lohan’s “first disastrous shoot”; how she—stressed out from issues in her personal life and strained from trying to record her first album during the shoot—eventually ended up hospitalized with a kidney infection. The magazine also recounted how Lohan terminated Herbie’s European promotional tour, and how Disney de-emphasized her on the movie poster due to “un-Disney-like behavior”.

Lohan’s next film in wide release, Just My Luck, opened in May 2006 to poor reviews and earned $38 million worldwide.

Independent movies and career interruptions

Following Just My Luck, Lohan focused on smaller roles in more mature, independent movies. In June 2006, A Prairie Home Companion, in limited release, ended its run earning $25 million globally. “Lohan rises to the occasion, delivering a rock-the-house version of ‘Frankie and Johnny’,” wrote Peter Travers. Lohan completed filming the independent Emilio Estevez film, Bobby, in December 2005; the film was released in theaters on 23 November 2006, earning $19 million worldwide. While Bobby received generally mixed reviews (45% on Rotten Tomatoes), Lohan got some praise for her performance, particularly a scene opposite Sharon Stone.

She then appeared in Chapter 27 as a John Lennon fan who befriends Mark David Chapman (Jared Leto) on the day he murders the singer. It was filmed in New York between January and March 2006. The film had trouble finding a distributor for the United States and received a very limited release. Chapter 27 was widely panned by critics.

On May 11, 2007, the drama Georgia Rule, in which Lohan starred alongside Felicity Huffman and Jane Fonda, was released. The production received adverse publicity when a letter from a studio executive to Lohan criticizing her professionalism was made public. James G. Robinson, CEO of the film’s production company, wrote: “You and your representatives have told us that your various late arrivals and absences from the set have been the result of illness; today we were told it was ‘heat exhaustion’. We are well aware that your ongoing all night heavy partying is the real reason for your so-called ‘exhaustion’.” The film received mostly negative reviews and grossed US$24 million worldwide.

After entering a rehabilitation facility in January 2007, Lohan withdrew from a film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s A Woman of No Importance, her publicist stating that Lohan needed to “focus on getting better”. During her stay, she was allowed to continue shooting her latest film I Know Who Killed Me, returning to the center at night. Production on the film was previously halted when Lohan underwent appendix surgery earlier in the month. Lohan also dropped out of The Edge of Love in late April 2007, just before filming was to begin with the director citing “insurance reasons” and Lohan later explaining that she “was going through a really bad time then.” Lohan was then cast in the film adaptation of Poor Things. She ultimately lost, or perhaps withdrew from, the part following her May 2007 DUI arrest, although the film’s producers voiced support for her decision to once again enter rehab.

On July 24, 2007, Lohan—in the wake of her second DUI arrest—withdrew from a scheduled appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to promote her starring role as a stripper in the thriller-mystery film I Know Who Killed Me. Lohan plays a young woman who appears to suffer from split personalities after being rescued from a serial killer. The film premiered “to an abysmal $3.5 million” and made $9,595,945 at the box office worldwide and earned Lohan two nominations for worst actress at the Golden Raspberry Awards. She came in first and second, tying with herself.

Entertainment Weekly quoted the head of a major film studio as saying, “Her career was over long before she had these troubles … Right now, she’d have to pay a studio to get herself into a movie.” The article continues, “There’s the L.A. bar scene that serves underage stars and Hollywood’s compulsion to turn child actors into products, plus a frenzied 21st century media culture that has made Lohan and other celebs into exotic prey in flashbulb cages.” ABC News quoted publicist Michael Levine as calling Lohan unemployable “for the next 18 months.” The head of a talent agency agreed, noting that her personal issues likely made the insurance and other costs required for any film production to proceed prohibitively expensive. James Robinson, the producer of Georgia Rule, stated he would still like to work with her. “She’s a good person who’s making some bad choices. She needs time to get the proper medical care, but when she’s in the right emotional state, I’d put her in a movie right away … She’s probably one of the most talented young women in the movie business today.”

In May 2008, Lohan appeared on ABC’s Ugly Betty television series, her first screen appearance since I Know Who Killed Me.Subsequently guest starring in a total of four episodes, spanning seasons two and three in 2008, Lohan played Kimmie Keegan, an old schoolmate of America Ferrera’s character Betty Suarez.

Lohan’s latest film project, Labor Pains, in which she plays a young woman who pretends to be pregnant to avoid being fired, is not being released to theaters in spring 2009 as originally planned. Instead, it will appear as a TV movie on the ABC Family cable channel in July 2009 and be released on DVD a month later.

It was announced in May 2009 that Lohan has landed the lead role in the upcoming 2010 film The Other Side, alongside Jason Lee, Woody Harrelson, Alanis Morissette and Eddie Izzard. She will star as a grad student who discovers a mystery involving the strange residents of a remote island.

She is also set to appear in Dare to Love Me which is also slated for a 2010 release.

Source: Various