American actress Lindsay Lohan is set to appear in Netflix’s forthcoming romantic comedy Falling for Christmas. In it, she plays a newly engaged and spoiled hotel heiress who suffers from amnesia after getting into a skiing accident.
The film marks Linday’s first major role in more than a decade, having spent the last 10 years resigned to guest appearances and several stints on reality TV. It also marks the first of several films she is to star in as part of a multi-film deal with Netflix, to be followed up in 2023 with fantasy rom-com Irish Wish.
This could be the start of a comeback for the 36-year-old, after enduring years of personal and professional issues. After making her mark on Hollywood in the early 2000s, Lindsay has spent years out of the spotlight – so what has she been doing all this time?
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The millennium started strongly for Lindsay. After making her breakthrough in her film debut with 1998’s The Parent Trap, she went on to star in Disney’s remake of Freaky Friday in 2003 opposite scream-queen Jamie Lee Curtis.
The following year, she starred in two films which became box-office hits: Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, and the now-iconic teen movie Mean Girls (2004). The latter cemented her A-list status, going on to become a huge cult smash still referenced throughout popular culture almost 20 years later.
Her career then went from strength to strength, as she went on to star in several other Hollywood movies in the mid-2000s, including Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) and Just My Luck (2006), before she branched out into more mature films in a bid to showcase her range as an actress. That was until 2006, when the press caught wind of reported issues on set of the film Georgia Rule claiming Lindsay failed to show up to set.
What followed was years of intense and prolonged media and public scrutiny for the star. From then on, Lindsay was rarely out of the tabloids, which had become fixated on her personal life, including her frequent partying.
Her troubles came to a head in 2007 when she was convicted of drink driving, cocaine use, had three stints in rehab and served an 84-minute prison sentence. Speaking to Piers Morgan for the Daily Mail in 2013 regarding her arrest for drug use, she said: “From then on, the press were on me all the time.
“It was the first time I’d taken drugs. I was out in a club with people I shouldn’t have been with, and took cocaine, and got in the car. It was so stupid.”
She also told Morgan her first stay in rehab was to help deal with the trauma from making the film I Know Who Killed Me in 2007, rather than for drugs or alcohol. She later endured six court-ordered stays in rehab following further arrests for drink driving, reckless driving and shoplifting.
Lindsay told Morgan she is simply misunderstood, claiming the stories in the press reporting her constant partying and legal issues misrepresent her. She said: “I’ve never been a junkie, and never will be.
“I just like going out late to clubs with friends and listening to music. Always have done. It’s not that unusual for girls of 26!”
She later acknowledged her substance problems in September 2010, just before entering California rehab centre the Betty Ford Clinic. She posted on Twitter: “Substance abuse is a disease, which unfortunately doesn’t go away over night.
“I am working hard to overcome it and am taking positive steps.”
Linday’s arrest mugshots were widely circulated in the world’s media, and her career quickly began a sharp downturn. Over the next decade, she made many guest appearances on TV shows – including Ugly Betty and Glee – and recorded two studio albums, though she failed to reach the heights she had achieved in previous years.
In 2010, she was dropped from the production of indie fantasy film The Other Side when financiers reportedly became worried about her bankability, according to Vanity Fair. She went on to feature in several movies which were either unsuccessful or made for TV.
Her last major acting role came in August 2013 when she starred in low-budget B-movie The Canyons. Directed by Taxi Driver screenwriter Paul Schrader and written by American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis, the film was a critical and commercial failure, and Linday’s performance attracted mixed reviews.
According to The New York Times, Lindsay was difficult to work with and her professional relationship with Schrader was tumultuous. The following year, Lindsay released an eight-part docuseries on Oprah Winfrey’s TV network detailing her life after her final rehab stint and her return to work.
The same year, she made her stage debut in London’s West End, starring in Speed-the-Plow, a satirical take on the movie business for which she again received mixed reviews. She began to work more frequently towards the end of the 2010s, landing a recurring role in British comedy series Sick Note in 2018 and her own reality series, Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club, which detailed the running of her beach club in Mykonos, Greece.
She also enjoyed a stint as a panellist on the Australian version of The Masked Singer for its debut season, but was unable to return for its second year due to Covid-19 travel restrictions. Over 2019 and 2020, Lindsay recorded and released several singles as she made a return to the music business.
Back to Me, her first single in 12 years, garnered positive reviews from critics, with Billboard describing it as a “chill track with an upbeat club vibe”. Posting on Instagram at the time, Lindsay said the song was about “rediscovering and accepting oneself, shutting out the noise and moving forward and letting the past go.”
The next year, in May 2021, Netflix announced the former teen idol would star in Falling for Christmas, with the streaming giant later confirming a multi-film partnership. Earlier this year, Lindsay narrated Amazon Prime Video’s reality dating show Lovestruck High, with the second of film of her Netflix deal announced in September.
In April, Lindsay launched her own podcast, The Lohdown with Lindsay Lohan, in which she discusses “the successes, the failures, the hard work and the moments in life that make you smile.” It received positive reviews and ran for 12 episodes, but none have been released since September.
As of November, Lindsay has no film or TV projects lined up other than her Netflix projects, according to her IMDb profile. Falling for Christmas is released on Netflix on Thursday November 10 at 8am.
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