Back in the early 2000s, Lindsay Lohan was one of the most famous celebrities in Hollywood. Today,
however, she's pretty much nowhere to be seen. So how and why has her star fallen
in the last decade and a half? This is why you rarely hear from Lindsay Lohan anymore.
Lindsay Lohan has had some pretty significant and well-documented difficulties with alcohol
and drugs over the years. As of 2013, Lohan had been to court-ordered rehab six times,
while her grand total of intoxicant-related incidents is too long to list.
"Are you an addict?"
"Yeah."
Now, Lohan hasn't actually gotten in trouble for anything in a good long while,
but her spotlight didn't fade simply because she used to enjoy having a good time. For one thing,
her track record quickly made her an insurance liability on multi-million dollar movie sets.
For another thing, Lohan's chaotic personal life began to overshadow her career accomplishments.
Indeed, most of her heyday projects didn't have much staying power, and in the minds
of today's media-consuming public, she's known for Mean Girls and The Parent Trap
and, well, that's pretty much it. The sad fact is that there came a
point at which Lohan was better known for being self-destructive than she was for being creative.
Lohan did at least get some later work making self-aware appearances as herself on long-running
shows such as Anger Management and Glee. But while a little ironic self-deprecation might
be funny every now and again, when it's the only trick a performer can still pull off,
it can become kinda depressing. And once that happens, the work dries up completely.
For the most part, Lindsay Lohan's legal problems have been related to her substance abuse issues.
Her rap sheet is a little too long to list in full, but basically,
Lohan managed to cram the period between 2007 and 2013 full of DUI arrests, lightning-quick
stints in jail, probation violations, and one charge of cocaine procession. As a result,
she has had to jump through a bunch of procedural hoops — and pay a ton of money, to boot.
In addition, assuming various allegations against her are true, it appears that Lohan is,
or has been, a hardcore kleptomaniac. The troubled star has been accused of stealing from parties,
a wide variety of friends, a jewelry store or two, the wardrobe departments of her own movies,
and from ex-boyfriend Egor Tarabasov . While it's not quite fair to pass judgement when
you don't know the full story, it's probably safe to say that this unfortunate reputation
has made execs and producers think twice about casting Lohan on their projects.
Of course, a celebrity going off the radar usually
means more than just appearing in fewer movies and TV shows. With that in mind,
it's worth asking: why has the media seemingly lost interest in Lindsay Lohan?
Well, it's partly because she lives in Dubai now, which makes her a lot less accessible to
the American press. It also happens to be the case that, during the mid-2000s,
celeb-centric media developed a fixation on famous young women who were enthusiastic participants in
recreational nightlife activities. This included Lohan herself, hotel chain heiress Paris Hilton,
future TV personality Nicole Richie, and, perhaps most notably, Kim Kardashian — who
swung her brief phase of notoriety into a media and fashion empire that carries on to this day.
While the Kardashian brand may have flourished, however,
the media obsession with Hilton, Richie, and Lohan had pretty much run its course by 2010.
That's probably because the public quickly became worn out from hearing about the same
celebrities getting in trouble all the time. But maybe, after Lohan narrowly avoided felony
charges and Hilton wound up doing jail time in 2007, the public stopped finding their exploits
quite so fun to follow — and so the media decided to focus its attention elsewhere.
Intended as Lindsay Lohan's groundbreaking transition into edgy, adult roles, 2007's I
Know Who Killed Me was shredded by critics and largely ignored by moviegoers. Worse still,
the production had to contort itself around Lohan's court-mandated rehab stints, plus
a handful of other Lohan-related obstacles — although director Chris
Sivertson has since praised her acting, saying:
"She’s got an incredible amount of raw talent, and what she does on-camera seems almost effortless."
Within the first 10 minutes, it becomes immediately obvious that Sivertson very
much wants I Know Who Killed Me to be Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me.
But is it really fair to label I Know Who Killed Me as discount David Lynch
and toss it aside? Could it be that the world of 2007 was simply too sick of Lindsay
Lohan to give the film an honest chance? Well, as critic Charles Bramesco writes:
"The baggage [Lohan] dropped off at set only served to deepen and enrich the subtext of
a stealth noir gem, one that gestures to a long-bygone era of movie stardom
through the framework of a cheaper and dirtier sort of serial killer thriller."
Maybe this one does deserve another chance after all.
The microbudget brainchild of director Paul Schrader and writer Bret Easton Ellis,
The Canyons was met with critical scorn, and it wasn't exactly widely seen,
either. This isn't necessarily surprising, as it's a erotic thriller with a serious
mean streak — so not exactly mainstream fare. Still, the film's dead-on-arrival
status proved that controversy alone cannot always carry a film to profit.
The fact that Lohan allegedly couldn't be bothered to promote the film probably didn't
help matters. But more importantly, a few years after the movie's release, a deluge of sexual
assault allegations ruined the public's ability to comfortably watch Lohan's Canyons
co-star James Deen pretend to abuse a woman on screen. As such, it doesn't seem like The
Canyons stands much chance of becoming an ironic cult favorite anytime soon.
But even before all that happened, the production had been caught up in the ongoing tornado of
upheaval that defined Lindsay Lohan's life at the time. It seems reasonable to suggest,
in hindsight, that maybe Schrader and Ellis should've known better.
Clearly, Lindsay Lohan's acting career hit its high water mark with Mean Girls.
Ever since she played Cady Heron, however, she's drifted further and further away from acting,
to the point that it has ceased to be her primary occupation.
"That is so fetch!"
"Gretchen, stop trying to make 'fetch' happen. It is not going to happen."
So, if you wanted to make the case that she's more than a little washed up as an actress,
you could credibly do so. But that doesn't mean
she's stopped acting completely — or performing in other ways.
In fact, Lohan appeared in a video-on-demand Underworld-ish movie called Among The Shadows
in 2019. She also showed up on season two of Sick Note alongside Rupert Grint
and Nick Frost in 2018, and is attached to a Mickey Rourke project called Cursed. Sure,
Disney's probably not calling her agent as much these days, but it's not like she's doing nothing.
As far as Lohan's music career goes, it may surprise you to learn that she's quietly started
putting new music out again as of 2020. This ends a long stretch of inactivity in the music
industry, reaching back to the release of her 2005 album, A Little More Personal (Raw). Whether
she's on the way back to her platinum-selling heights of yore, however, remains to be seen.
Even nowadays, after drugs and alcohol have ostensibly been removed from the picture,
Lindsay Lohan's career continues to take an unpredictable route. As it turns out,
she's perfectly capable of getting involved in all kinds of weird stuff beyond singing, acting, and
getting into trouble. Unfortunately, they haven't all been the most successful of endeavours.
In 2019, Lohan appeared as a judge on the Australian version of
The Masked Singer — though she didn't last very long. Meanwhile,
her MTV reality series Lindsay Lohan's Beach Club only made it through a single season before
the featured Mykonos resort — one of Lohan's personal business ventures — ceased operations.
However, People magazine reports two other Greek entertainment establishments Lohan
co-owns remain open for business. Moreover, she made several million selling the Mykonos location.
So at least, in this case, it seems like Lohan managed to fail upwards for a change.
While Lohan has had some success as a nightclub entrepreneur, however,
her attempts at humanitarian interventionism have been a far more mixed bag. In 2018,
she got into a bizarre altercation in Moscow with a woman she accused of child trafficking.
Nobody's really sure about the exact details of what happened or why, but Lindsay's behavior in
the video fuelled speculation that everything was far from okay with the star. When asked about the
incident by journalists some time later, Lindsay repeatedly dodged their questions,
before having a representative email a prepared statement to Paper magazine, which read:
"I've read the situation wrong. I've learned from it. And that's all I have to say."
Back in the good old days, if a celebrity wanted to make some extra money with a high-profile
advertising gig, all they could do was cross their fingers and hope that a big brand would
hire them to be in a TV or print commercial. Nowadays, things work a little differently,
as brands prefer celebrities to push their products on social media.
Lindsay Lohan has taken that paradigm a step further with the U.K.-based
jewelry company Lily Baker Jewels, with which she co-designed a line of accessories. It's hard to
determine Lohan's genuine level of participation or interest in this venture, though. After all,
celebs do tend to exaggerate their level of involvement with the products they slap
their names on. But Lohan has been heavily promoting the collection on social media,
to the point that she seems at least somewhat engaged in the marketing process.
Considering many celebrities only do the bare minimum with this sort of thing,
it does seem that you can count this as a genuine career venture from Lindsay Lohan.
Depending on how up to date you are with financial trends, bitcoin will seem like either one of the
biggest fads of the moment or little more than yesterday's news. One thing is for certain,
though: Lindsay Lohan falls into the former category. In February 2020, Lohan tweeted:
"Bitcoin to the moon."
Then, days later, she followed that up with:
"Bitcoin to Mars."
Now, "to the moon" is a very real phrase with distinct meaning in the world of cryptocurrency,
so it's clear she does know what she's talking about — at least on the surface.
Lohan was also happy to record a Cameo video predicting a grand horizon for crypto — but
considering the fact that Cameo is about getting celebs to say whatever you want,
maybe that one needs to be taken with a grain of salt.
It's pretty easy to understand how Lindsay Lohan might have no idea how to feel or behave
after receiving good press — especially after the constant mockery and belittlement
she endured from the media throughout the late 2000s and beyond. Indeed,
this seemed to be the case in January 2021, when a 20-year-old fan named Alana contacted Lohan about
a proposed Cameo recording. Apparently, Alana was struggling to come out to her parents. So,
in a TikTok video, she floated the idea of hiring the actor to reveal the truth for her.
Then, in her own video, Lohan responded to Alana with the following words of wisdom.
"You are about to take a very big step in telling your parents
who you truly are and what you want them to accept of you."
Lohan went on to say:
"I think that coming from you,
you'll feel a lot of power and strength. And it's important that you are who you truly are."
The clip became a minor viral sensation, and had the world thinking that maybe Lindsay Lohan was
more than a vapid fallen celebrity cliché after all. Then, Alana was quickly asked to remove
the video from the internet. Perhaps all the positive attention she was suddenly getting made
Lohan just a little bit uncomfortable? Nobody can know for sure. One thing we do know,
however, is that — even after all this time — it's pretty much impossible to guess what
Lindsay Lohan is going to do next. And you've gotta give her credit for that.
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