Lindsay Lohan – what went wrong?
Watching a 12-year-old Lindsay Lohan steal every scene in the 1998 movie The Parent Trap, it was evident that the red-headed child, surprisingly talented for her age, had a bright future ahead of her. However, 14 years later Lindsay’s career is troubled, she has been in and out of jail and struggled with drug and alcohol problems. More famous now for her press-grabbing exploits than her acting, she lurches from one disaster to the next, all under the glare of the media.
Last week, she has narrowly managed to avoid jail again as she failed an alcohol test whilst being on house arrest. Unfortunately for Lohan, the authorities did not take kindly to her throwing a barbeque whilst on house arrest and she was accused of not taking her sentence seriously enough. Even though the authorities spared her this time, Lindsay is no stranger to jail sentences and has served time before, even though her visits have been cut short due to overcrowding. Hardly the role-model Disney hoped she would turn out to be.
In the beginning of her career, Lindsay seemed to have it all. She was branded a “triple threat” because she was talented at acting, dancing and singing. She built up a strong, loyal fanbase and enjoyed success in both acting and her singing career, releasing albums including Speak. However, after showing such early promise in hit movies such as Freaky Friday and Mean Girls, Lindsay’s career started to unravel in 2007 when she gained two driving under influence charges and visited rehabilitation centres. Before long, she was known for all the wrong reasons. Co-stars branded her unreliable and impossible to work with and she began losing film roles. Photos of her partying appeared in the press and her offer of helping Obama’s election efforts in 2008 was declined – it seemed that Lindsay now attracted more negative publicity than positive.
Lindsay’s personal relationships have been as troubled as her career. Her estranged father, Michael Lohan, has been in trouble with the law and she has a turbulent relationship with her mother, Dina. She was said to be devastated over the break-up with her girlfriend, Sam Ronson, in 2009. Lindsay has her demons along with the rest of us, but unfortunately has had to deal with them in the public eye.
So can Lindsay ever recover from the negative publicity that she has generated for herself and get her career back on track? Despite her reputation, she has started to re-build her shattered career and has two movies planned to start filming later this year. Lindsay is a classic example of a young star whose life has gone completely wrong. It’s anyone’s guess which road she will go down – whether she continues to spiral down her path of self-destruction or whether she can turn it around and revert back to her former self, the promising actress and role model she started out to be. And for Lindsay’s sake, let’s hope it’s the latter.
